Canada: Not Much Better

As I'm sure we all know, there is nothing Canadians enjoy more than gloating about stupid Americans. It's a national pastime; as much as it can be said that there is a pan-Canadian identity (rather than a series of weak regional ones), looking down upon our neighbours is a central component of it. Throughout the height of the Bush era (2003-2006), Canadian left-wingers (myself included) patted ourselves on the backs loudly for steering clear of the various ills of the American empire - foreign adventurism, religious zealotry, hyper-exaggerated rhetoric, etc. It was a nice fantasy, I suppose, that we could try and define ourselves as a culture by throwing out the worst excesses of the United States and keeping the rest: America, but without all the fat.

Editorials like this remind me that, no matter how much I wish it weren't so, we aren't so different after all. The story starts here, an article published on the front page of the Globe and Mail that calls out Gary Goodyear, Canada's Minister of State for Science and Technology, for repeatedly dodging the question of whether he believes in evolution or not. When asked flat out, here's what he said:

“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate”

The article, understandably, got people talking on both sides, especially as the Harper budget that was passed this January contained sizable cuts to scientific research funding.

Now, having a science minister, in charge of doling out money for research, who doesn't believe in a fundamental scientific concept, would be pretty bad. And he must have been the target of some substantial pressure to walk away from his statements, because not long after he "clarified" that he did, in fact, believe in evolution (although he argued that this was "irrelevant"). That's somewhat relieving, and if the story ended there I think I could brush this whole thing off as an aberration from the norm of Canadian sensibility and rationalism - I don't know enough about Goodyear to know if he does or doesn't believe in evolution, but at least there was a strong enough push-back to his comments that he felt he had to respond. Alas, I then opened Jonathan Kay's editorial (linked above), which immediately jumps into the debate with this:

In a 2007 poll, 26% of respondents said they believe in creationism, 29% picked evolution, and 34% said they believe in some combination of the two.

The rest of the editorial is infuriating (he argues that the original G&M piece was a puffed-up hit-job by the liberal media and that evolution is a minority-held belief and therefore those who demand it be supported publicly are "militant"), but whatever, it's pretty standard fare when it comes to political back-and-forth. The poll, though, the poll is scary. Assuming the poll was fishy, I looked it up, only to upset myself more:

Asked to choose the statement which "comes closest" to their views, 26 percent of those polled said: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Another 29 percent declared: "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process." The largest group (34 percent) held a middle position: "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process."

I should note that the survey only had a sample size of 1,000 people, and that 11% of those interviewed gave some answer that was excluded entirely by the pollsters, but still. The last 10,000 years? That's some fucked-up shit.