I am attaching to this post the full text (minus my name and address) of an email I sent earlier today to Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty, Opposition Leader Mulcair, Justin Trudeau (Liberal leader), Elizabeth May (Green Party leader), Paul Dewar (NDP Foreign Affairs Critic and my MP), Peggy Nash (NDP Finance Critic) and Murray Rankin (NDP National Revenue Critic).  For greater effect (I hope), I sent these emails separately rather than as a bulk list or ccs.  I focused a bit on NDP members, because I want to flag the Toronto Centre dimension to current sitting members (and maybe also hand a few grenades to the other parties for the by-election, if McQuaig wins the nomination and the other recipients’ staffers pay attention).
IGA email re Cruz etc
The full text is too lengthy to post here, and perhaps arguably too lengthy as an email (more than four pages).  However, the first page summarizes the six points I wanted to make; the following pages are elaboration and a few web links supporting the points.
The gist of the email is to express opposition to a Canada-US IGA, for reasons that are already painfully familiar to regular visitors to this website – with the recent addition of the Ted Cruz story, which necessarily takes a full page on its own, to communicate exactly why I consider the treatment of his renunciation of his accidental Canadian citizenship so grotesquely disparate to a not-so-hypothetical parallel renunciation of accidental US citizenship.  I think this stark and compelling example needs to be driven home to our elected parliamentarians and cabinet ministers.  (I maybe should have used the female gender in my example, but that didn’t occur to me until after I sent the emails and then stumbled over one of WhiteKat’s blogs, sorry WhiteKat no offense intended …)
The current timing of an email such as this is, I believe, critical, given the possibilities of an IGA announcement when Parliament resumes in October (and, one hopes, not before then!).
One email probably won’t make a difference. But multiple emails may make a difference.  I encourage all Canadians visiting this website, whatever your national or ethnic origin (to borrow the words of our precious Section 15 of the Charter), to send similar emails NOW to your own Member of Parliament and to other members as you think appropriate.
No doubt my email could have been shorter and perhaps better-written.  Please do NOT cut and paste my wording; use your own, perhaps with my wording as a starting point for improvement.  Cut-and-paste jobs don’t have the impact of obviously-individual emails.
I appreciate so very much all that Lynne, Victoria, Don and others have done in attempting to get these stories before Canadian media.  But I am discouraged at how seldom we seem to get much media traction in Canada.  I think our best bet, for now, is to blitz Parliament with the message.
And please, those of you who are NDP members, even if you don’t live in Toronto Centre, hammer home your concerns to Mulcair and the NDP critics, mentioning your NDP membership in your emails.  I didn’t do that in the copy I’m posting here, nor in the copies I sent to Harper, Flaherty, Trudeau and May, since I don’t want to dilute the message by flagging that I’m not one of their “base” members.  I’m rubbing the NDP’s nose in it, though.
Toronto Centre residents, whether NDP or not, should pay close attention to what happens to the NDP nomination meeting on September 15.  Vote accordingly in the by-election.  See my post on this elsewhere on Sandbox, linked in my email.
Remember, all that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good people to say and do nothing when it rears its ugly head.
And (re the thread title): one black fly can’t kill a moose, but a swarm of black flies can bleed a moose to death, if the moose can’t free itself from the swarm.  Let’s bleed the moose!  NOW!