re: #658 Josephine

First, he has said that he believes in evolution.

Second, you would have to prove that his religious convictions stopped him from performing his job as mandated by the Government of Canada.

Third, you seem to be assuming that he is a one-man office and that no one else is involved in making these decisions.

The government has given millions of dollars to the Genome Project and expects that money to last a while. The government has a huge budget deficit right now. It doesn’t have limitless funds to hand out. The Genome Project wanted new money and didn’t get it, so it is unhappy. It will probably get more money in the future.

He went into political CYA mode, after his previous remarks invoking an argument from ignorance and deeming a question about evolution to be religious ignited a firestorm. Since his zeroing of funding seems to have been selectively directed at bioscience research, the implication is easily drawn. What the already allocated money will NOT allow to happen is the pursuit of needed and promising new genome research. And he HAS to hold considerable sway over the budgetary allocations of a ministry that he heads.