Gary Goodyear

Gary T. Goodyear (born March 10, 1958, in Cambridge, Ontario) is a Canadian politician.

He started his full-time practice in Cambridge in 1984 where he was Clinic Director, Director of Patient Services and Past President of Future Recovery Canada.

He was a co-designer of the three year post-graduate Sports Fellowship Program.

He also co-authored "Practice Guidelines" and was Public Relations Director and Past President for the College of Chiropractic Sports Sciences in Toronto.

He was also the health columnist for the Cambridge Times newspaper from 1986 to 1996, and has taught at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College and the University of Waterloo..

He was a member of the House of Commons of Canada from 2004 to 2015, having been elected to represent the riding of Cambridge as a Conservative in 2004.

In the 2004 federal election, Goodyear defeated incumbent Liberal Janko Peric by 224 votes (as confirmed on recount) to win the Cambridge riding.

After the election, Goodyear was named Ontario Chair of the Conservative Party caucus.

A former campaign manager for Goodyear admits he negotiated a lease for a campaign headquarters in 2004 that said the landlord would make a political donation to Goodyear's election bid.

In a compliance agreement with the Commissioner of Canada Elections, Reg Petersen "acknowledged an act that constitutes an offence" under the Elections Act.

The Conservative Party's spokesperson, Ryan Sparrow, responded that the error was a mistake made by a first-time campaign manager and noted that "Elections Canada has acknowledged that [Peterson] made a mistake and no further action has been taken."

He was re-elected in 2006 with the endorsement of Vote Marriage Canada, and was also endorsed by the Canadian Islamic Congress receiving a grade of A In 2006, he won the riding of Cambridge by almost 6,000 votes.

After the 2006 federal election Goodyear was elected Standing committee chair of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (of which he chairs the Subcommittee on Parliament Hill Security.) In March 2008 the Procedure and House Affairs Committee ousted Goodyear by moving a motion of non-confidence in him.

The committee then elected Conservative MP Joe Preston as the chair against his will, and he called no meetings before resigning from his position.

The committee currently has no chair and has not met since March 6.

Jay Hill, Conservative party whip, said he is adamant that unless the opposition is willing to meet to re-elect Goodyear as the chair and to withdraw the motion to study the In and Out scandal, there will be no Procedure and House Affairs committee meetings.

The Speaker of the House made a ruling on the events in this committee and others which stated rulings by committee chairs are being routinely overturned by majority votes, even when the rulings are procedurally sound.

Such a state of affairs has led to "general lawlessness" at committees.

Goodyear also chairs Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure He was also named Chairman of the all-party Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group.

On October 30, 2008, he was named Minister of State for Science & Technology within Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet.

Following the Conservative victory in the 2008 federal election, Goodyear was appointed to the cabinet portfolio of Minister of State for Science and Technology.

In 2009 named Minister of State responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) created by the federal government through Budget 2009 to "support Ontario’s then floundering economy."

FedDev Ontario had a $1-billion budget for 2009–2014.

Among other things, FedDev helped small companies develop new products faster, similar to the role played by the Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).

In early 2009, Goodyear oversaw $147.9 million in funding cuts for science programs, the most prominent being the lack of any funding for new projects for Genome Canada.

Critics of the cuts, including a team of neuroscientists who lost funding, argued that when coupled with the Obama administration's increased funding for science, the cuts could produce a brain drain as researchers move to the United States and secure funding.

June 2009 saw Goodyear recommending the SSHRC withdraw a $19,750 funding grant for a future of Israel and Palestine conference because it was deemed by the Minister to be too anti-Israel.

Goodyear responded, saying that he did call the SSHRC to ask for a funding review, but denied he asked them to cancel the grant.

Under Goodyear, federal science and technology expenditures reached nearly $11.9 billion in 2010–11.

Goodyear was re-elected in the May 2nd elections in 2011 and returned to Stephen Harper's cabinet as Minister of State for Science & Technology.

In May 2012 Jameson Berkow of reported in the Financial Post that halfway its mandate, "Mr. Goodyear’s Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario [...] appears to have enjoyed unbridled success in helping Canada’s most populous province save itself from economic oblivion."

Under the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, the NRC became a "toolbox for industry" and dented basic-research infrastructure.

"Goodyear, the minister of state for science and technology, has presided over the most retrograde federal Science and Technology policy in memory. During his tenure, the government shuttered the office of the National Science Adviser, blocked asbestos from a UN hazardous chemicals list on which it clearly belongs, gutted the Fisheries Act, gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act, set out to weaken the Species at Risk Act, killed the long-form census, eroded Environment Canada’s ability to monitor climate change, earned an international reputation for muzzling scientists and, at a great potential cost, defunded the world’s leading freshwater research centre... At the same time, changes to our science-funding regime and a makeover of the National Research Council, Canada’s science agency, into a tool box for industry have dented our basic-research infrastructure and damaged our prospects for innovation."

In the Economic Action Plan 2012, the federal government announced that one billion new dollars are to be invested in science and technology.

Under the Economic Action Plan, the National Research Council was transformed into a research and technology organization that focuses on "business-led research."

He was replaced in this capacity by Greg Rickford on July 15, 2013.

Goodyear was defeated by Liberal Candidate Bryan May, in the 2015 Canadian federal election.

Goodyear was raised and educated in Cambridge, Ontario.

After high school he attended the University of Waterloo, studying in Biomechanics and Psychology, but left without completing a degree.

He afterwards attended the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, where he graduated cum laude, was class president, and valedictorian.