Genevieve Simms

Last week, Minister of Science and Technology Gary Goodyear declined to answer, when asked by the Globe and Mail, whether he believed in evolution. In a subsequent interview on CTV, which alluded to his creationist beliefs, he clarified matters by stating, “Of course I do. But it is an irrelevant question…. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.”

Unfortunately, Goodyear then muddied things once more when he went on to explain what he understood by evolution. “We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes, of course we are evolving to our environment.”

Oh dear. Rather than closing the issue, Goodyear’s statement merely served to provoke responses that were as predictable as they were inevitable.

On the one side are those critics who claim it is wrong, if not ludicrous, to have a man who either doubts or at least has little grasp of the cornerstone theory of modern science to be in charge of a ministry that assesses scientific projects and awards grants. Opposed are his defenders who argue an individual’s personal beliefs — religious or otherwise — are neither here nor there. As long as Goodyear does his job, that’s all that matters.

Both sides have a point, yet both also miss the point, to some extent. If we clear a way through all the knee-jerk rhetoric, there are at least three bigger questions at stake here.

First, should personal beliefs ever be an issue in politics? If so, at what stage in the political process should they come under public scrutiny? In one sense, an individual’s political values must inevitably reflect their deeper beliefs about the world, and so would appear to be fair game. For example, an individual’s private faith in, say, the existence of pixies or the Easter Bunny should obviously be taken into account when considering them fit for high office.

But wait. There’s a deeper philosophical point here. What if those beliefs are held but not publicly disclosed, as in the case of Mr. Goodyear before last week? Is it our awareness of those beliefs, rather than the beliefs themselves that matters here? If a minister appears to exercise his or her office with all due diligence, then what does it matter if they harbour a few offbeat ideas about the world?

After all, Goodyear was elected by the voters of Cambridge, Ontario in 2004. Surely it was at that point that any misgivings about his background should have come into play, not five years later. Or should the electorate have cast its vote on the proviso that Goodyear be allowed to hold only certain specified positions in government?

This leads to the second big question. What if a minister’s own beliefs are in conflict with the portfolio he holds? Critics who claim there’s an obvious conflict between Goodyear’s equivocal stand on evolution and his role as minister of science and technology too quickly personalize the function of government. After all, it’s safe to say that probably 90 per cent of all proposals that end up on Goodyear’s desk are beyond his own capacity to judge. True, he studied biomechanics and psychology at the University of Waterloo, but left without completing his degree.

However, it’s not really about Goodyear. No member of the Tory caucus, or even of the opposition ranks, has the training or skill to assess the merits of all scientific proposals. On any number of subjects, I would imagine that Goodyear’s own background, beliefs and interests render him incapable of passing meaningful judgment.

That’s where the third big question comes in. Critics and defenders of Goodyear alike appear to have misunderstood the nature and function of ministerial procedure in Canada. Or at least, they confuse the character of a particular minister with the department he heads. Few ministers are ever appointed on the basis of their own expertise in the field they represent, as is evident by the frequent turnover in appointment and portfolio shifting in any given administration.

Rather, it is the primary task of ministers to assemble experts and then draw on their expertise and advice when it comes to making decisions and then present those decisions to Parliament and the public. In this way, Goodyear’s own beliefs — whether in creationism or the man in the moon — are really beside the point.

That said, let’s not let Gary Goodyear off too lightly. After all, his own clarification — all that mumbo-jumbo about the intensity of the sun, walking on cement and changing year by year — betrays the fact that he has not the first clue about evolution. What he’s talking about, I would guess, is an individual’s adaptation to new circumstances or conditions; it’s got nothing to do with the process by which a species transforms across generations by the process of natural selection.

More than that, while Goodyear is obviously free to believe anything he wants — either as an individual or as a government minister — it is wrong for him (or anyone else) even to suggest a parity between creationist ideology and evolutionary science. The collection and eventual transcription of ancient Hebrew tales in the fifth century BC, their subsequent translation into Greek and then Latin and their final conversion into the stylized English of the early 1600s cannot, in any way, be equated with a rational or empirical account of how the universe, Earth and life itself came into existence.

That any individual in the 21st century still claims otherwise might indeed be grounds for questioning, not his specific ministerial appointment, but his judgment more generally.