The Conservative Party of Canada, or Bedlam Redux

It's started. Since the recent election of the Conservative Party, my fears of Canada drifting into a no-man's land of ideologically deranged governance are being realized.

The first proof? The denial of a modest $40k grant by the federal government to a McGill University professor who proposed to study the effects of Intelligent Design philosophy on Canadians' view of evolution theory. Pretty reasonable and benign, wouldn't you say?

The reason offered by Industry Canada (a federal department) for this rejection? The professor had not provided "justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct".

I am not going to weigh into the Darwinist/Creationist debate, and I am usually quite tolerant of divergent view points. But shit on a stick! What neo-con addled asswipe came up with the notion that evolution needed to be proven? Sure, theories change and adapt themselves to new data and discoveries. Sometimes we even throw them out the window as contradictory evidence presents itself. However, to declare that evolution is an unproven theory on par with intelligent design is as ideologically-driven a statement as they come.

So what next on the Conservative agenda? Trimming the health budget by reintroducing leechcraft and bloodletting? Funding the Flat Earth Society? Removing all books from schools, universities and public libraries containing evidence that man was not coeval with the dinosaurs, as our current Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day asserts?

Mark my words, this is only the start.