Goodyear gives millions to – gasp! – evolutionists!

On the day that Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technolgy, is getting the gears in some quarters for his inability to say that he believes in evolution, he announced (with the help of Diane Ablonzy) the award of $23 million in new or renewed Canada Research Chairs. The academic community is pretty much unanimous that the the Chairs program has been a big hit, helping to attract some top international research talent to move to and work in Canada and keep some of Canada's top talent from going elsewhere. So, given that there is the implicit suggestion in today's criticism of Goodyear that his government might not fund folks who are estabishing ever stronger evidence that evolution is as much a fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, let's look at some of the researchers celebrating today's funding:

• Dr. Andrew Waskiewicz of the University of Alberta got $500,000. He essentially “investigates the formation of the vertebrate central nervous system, with a focus on identifying cell to cell signaling mechanisms in the brainstem and eye” and does this by growing zebrafish in large numbers. In other words, he's looking at how cells change in a given organism from generation to generation to generation. That would be yer evolution in action, Minister.
• Dr. Sarah Childs at the University of Calgary got $500,000. She, too, grows lots of Zebrafish so she can study how genetics affects the growth of blood vessels. Another example of evolution at work in the lab.
• Prof. Linda Marie Fedigan at the University of Calgary got $500,000. She studies monkeys and – gasp – has actually published a book studying the role of women in models of human evolution . She's also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and they're a pretty pro-evolution group.
• Dr. Denise Daley at the University of British Columbia got $500,000. She's a genetic epidemiologist which — and I stand to be corrected — means that, by definition, evolution is one of the basic assumptions underlying her work into figuring out how much genetics contributes to a disease like asthma and how much you can chalk up that disease to environmental determinants.
• Stephen G. Withers of UBC got $1.4 million and he makes no bones about he'll use the money for: “One major area of interest is in the use of directed evolution …” Directed evolution! He's figuring out a way for humans to control Darwin's mysterious hand!

There's more, but you get my point: The Science Minister Who Believes Evolution is a Religious Question is spending tons of taxpayer dough on folks who use evolution every day to real science that has the potential to make us a lot better.