EDITORIALS Payette should guard diversity
Canada’s new Governor General didn’t waste any time stirring up a controversy. Not long after taking office, Gov. Gen. Julie Payette gave a speech defending science literacy and casting scorn on those who believe in creationism and horoscopes. It was a brave advocacy for rational thought, but it left people of faith fuming.
While her post comes with a bully pulpit, Payette has to be careful how she uses it. She is the Queen’s representative to all Canadians, not just to Canadians who agree with her.
In a speech at the Canadian Science Policy Convention in Ottawa, Payette, who is an engineer and former astronaut, encouraged her former colleagues to help prevent misinformation about everything from health and medicine to climate change and even horoscopes.
“Can you believe that still today in learned society, in houses of government, unfortunately, we’re still debating and still questioning whether humans have a role in the Earth warming up or whether even the Earth is warming up, period?” she said.
“And we are still debating and still questioning whether life was a divine intervention or whether it was coming out of a natural process, let alone, oh my goodness, a random process.”
She said too many people still believe “taking a sugar pill will cure cancer if you will it good enough, and that your future and every single one of the people here’s personalities can be determined by looking at planets coming in front of invented constellations.”
That was too much for many Christians and for many Times Colonist readers, who rushed to their keyboards to protest the Governor General’s words. To them, she was mocking the beliefs of many religions and those who don’t believe in evolution.
Conservative political strategist Alise Mills said the speech was not only political, but “mean-spirited.”
Last week, Payette, intentionally or not, balanced her previous comments by praising Canada’s tolerance and freedom of religion.
“Our values are tolerance and determination, and freedom of religion, freedom to act, opportunities, equality of opportunities amongst everyone and for all,” she told the New Brunswick legislature.
The former astronaut talked of her view from space of a world without borders.
“It is one planet and we all have a duty to protect it. We have to work together. We have to use our power to work together and make decisions and changes that are needed to preserve our world,” she said.
That message of inclusiveness was missing from her controversial comments a week before.
“I think that saying that some people’s opinions weren’t as important as others is not what has made Canada the nation it is today,” said Blaine Higgs, New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservative leader.
The notion of the equality of ideas is a tough one for someone such as Payette, who comes from the world of science. For the engineers who sent Payette’s space shuttle into orbit, all ideas are not equal.
The person who calculates the angle of re-entry knows there is one right answer and a lot of very wrong answers. In that line of work, holding steadfastly to your opinion is not a virtue unless your opinion is demonstrably correct under the laws of physics.
It’s a different story in matters of politics, faith, morality and the other axes of our life as communal beings. And that is the world Payette now inhabits. It’s a world where right and wrong are measured not by the values in equations, but by the values in people’s hearts.
Those people look to her as a symbol of unity and constitutional continuity. We don’t want her to hector us. We want her to embrace us in all our diversity.