How much science does our science minister understand?

To many in the research community, last week's federal budget cut to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences is a sign that the Harper government is "skeptical of climate-change science and hostile to those who provide evidence that aggressive action must be taken to avert catastrophic global warming." (http://tgam.ca/JaU) As a result of the cut, scientists have begun to shut down the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, located on Ellsmere Island some 1,100 kilometres from the North Pole, which served as a base for the collection of data on climate change.

Skeptical of climate-change science? The report reminded me of the flap from a year ago, when Gary Goodyear, our science minister, refused to reveal if he believed in evolution. (http://bit.ly/9LLs2l) His initial refusal, followed by a confusing and disingenuous "yes, I believe in evolution", bolstered the suspicions of many that our science minister was a creationist and wasn't quite on the same page as Darwin when it came to the origin of species.

You have to wonder what other scientific concepts--to go along with climate change and evolution--Goodyear doesn't quite have a handle on. Germ theory, plate tectonics, gravity, atomic theory? Should we worry about future cuts to Canada's space program because he's pretty sure the Earth is flat?