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As part of the Conservative minority government’s anti–drug strategy, announced in 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly announced through a press release that $550,000 will be used to examine a potential link between marijuana use and the development of schizophrenia. This style of political maneuvering has become commonplace during Harper’s reign. He takes a relatively small amount of money out of a larger budget (the government's anti–drug budget is $30 million) anduses it to fund a study that could well be damaging for the endeavours of marijuana activists. Of course, at face value, doing such a study may not be a terrible idea. After all, if smoking pot greatly increases the chances of schizophrenia, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to find that out. However, in typical Harper fashion, he has shown that his emphasis is not simply what type of research gets funding, but what type of person gets to be in charge of said research. In this case, the money has been handed over to Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada. The problem? Summerville is not a scientist. Summerville is not a doctor. He is, however, an ordained evangelical pastor. Now, does this mean he is unable to lead a successful study on the link between marijuana and schizophrenia? Not necessarily. Here is a quick run down of some of his church’s beliefs: all humans are depraved; we are all sinners; all non–Christians are lost souls; humans “fell” after eating forbidden fruit from an actual forbidden tree; Satan is an actual person who needs to be committed to an actual Lake of Fire. This, combined with a stance against marijuana use, is a dangerous foundation of unwavering, non–scientific belief for the head of a supposedly empirical research project to hold. This creates two main problems for this study. Firstly, Pastor Summerville may be unable to separate his beliefs from his research, and the results will be flawed, turning into more anti–
marijuana propaganda to prolong the long, futile battle against its use. Or the studies results may display a genuine, problematic link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. Since Harper chose to appoint an evangelical pastor to lead the project, even legitimate results will fail to gain traction within much of the populace, who will write off the work as being done by an ideologically, religiously–driven nut. That would be unfortunate for Summerville and the study at large, but would be likely, and would go great lengths to ensure that consensus on such issues would not be possible.

Stephen Harper has operated on a foundation of what I would call soft radicalism. Starting in his first campaign victory, he placed gag orders on his party’s members, forbidding discussion of religious and social positions. Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage, and evolution were all ignored as the Conservatives managed to become the sitting government. Harper has clearly realized that such views are feared by many Canadians. A 2006 poll showed that support for an evangelical to serve as prime minister had fallen 17 percent. Only 63 per cent of people said they would vote for an evangelical, compared with 68 per cent having no problem voting for a Muslim or an atheist. As a result, Harper and his evangelical cohorts have had to tread carefully and quietly to implement a softer pro–religious agenda than the sorts seen during the Bush years down south. But the signs are there. Take, for example, Cambridge MP Gary Goodyear. Despite only serving in government for four years, he was named Minister of Science and Technology. With all due respect for Goodyear, he was not qualified for such an appointment. With little experiencein either field (apart from working as a chiropractor), he has been put in charge making huge funding cuts in a critical department. Perhaps Harper was pleased by Goodyear’s religious background and views on evolution. When asked, Goodyear first described the question as inappropriate, because he was religious. Afterwards (perhaps realizing he was in charge of, you know, science), he hedged, declaring that he did in fact believe in it. Biologist Elizabeth Elle said of Goodyear’s explanation, “I think it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution by natural selection works.” What does it say about Prime Minister Harper that he is happy to appoint a man whose view on evolution is more convoluted than a Rubik’s Cube the size of the Rogers Centre to the head of the department of Science and Technology?

If you are wondering if this is unfair on Goodyear, think again. Let us look to America, where many people like to believe that religious zealots run everything. The tables seem to be turning. Who runs President Obama’s Department of Energy and Science? Only Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, a former professor at Berkeley, a famous advocate for alternative energies. Comparing the two is embarrassing for Canada and once again reveals Harper’s tendency to eschew actual qualifications in favour of his personal agenda. As Obama’s administration increases spending in areas of science, development, climate change and more, Harper and cabinet members like Goodyear are cutting funding to important scientific endeavours such as Genome Canada. It is quiet, it is soft, and it is difficult to pin down as religiously–motivated (it cannot of course definitively be said to be a religious quest). However, it makes the jobs of this nation’s scientists harder to do and restricts Canada’s ability to make its mark in the world of science. As long as questions like these exist, it will be impossible to take the scientific output of Summerville’s marijuana study and other similar projects all that seriously.