Theresa Tam’s annual public health report drowns in social justice jargon

In October, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam released Canada’s report on the state of public health in 2023. It reads more like Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s manifesto than a federal public health update, pledging allegiance to the World Health Organization’s global health architecture and the idea of One Health.

There is an entire page dedicated to a land acknowledgement before detailing an “Emergency Management Continuum” that is rooted in addressing equity and power imbalances, enabling behavioural change, and strengthening trust.

Peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity are all listed as prerequisites to health promotion.

Tam proposed implementing “Health Public Policies,” to minimize the direct and indirect impacts of emergencies on health and boost resilience to “enable health-promoting behaviours.”

There is a brief acknowledgement of “unintentional” harm caused by the COVID-19 public health response.

The report further states that “The COVID-19 pandemic also underlined the need to bring a human rights perspective to understanding and addressing the inequitable impacts of emergencies.”

The report omits any acknowledgment of government-sanctioned COVID-19 measures that infringed on human rights, such as denying children in-person education, violating mobility rights, engaging in non-consensual surveillance, and restricting freedom of assembly. It neglects to address the impact on economic freedom through business closures that favoured big box stores.

Likewise, there is no mention of keeping government-controlled liquor stores open, but closing the gyms, for your health.

The report fails to address the egregious violation of bodily autonomy and consent involved in indiscriminate mask mandates that pivoted within a year to mass injecting novel mRNA biopharmaceuticals into the arms of trusting Canadians.

Instead, it details an example from the British Columbia Human Rights Commissioner report in 2023 that specified a rise in hate speech and hate-fueled violence in 2020. It does not mention the vitriol flung at those who didn’t wear masks into Walmart and who refused to show papers to dine in at a restaurant.

Tam’s report happily notes her agency’s success in controlling Montreal in May of 2022 through vaccination awareness campaigns, including information disseminated through social media and a dating app that lead to over 30,000 Quebecers receiving a monkeypox vaccine!

“The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that behaviour change can be enabled through supportive environments and that additional interventions may be necessary for those who experience barriers to adhere to emergency response recommendations,” the report says, appearing to reinforce the necessity of Impact Canada’s behavioural science team.

Some examples of supportive environments are described as increasing options for physical distancing in congregate living environments, virtual health care, mobile testing sites, culturally appropriate food boxes, safe voluntary isolation sites, changes to the built environment, and eviction moratoria.

Supportive environments also include “information environments,” to encourage health-promoting behaviours.

Tam thinks that supportive information environments are particularly important to help counter mis- and disinformation.

"Mis- and disinformation lead to increased polarization, decreased public trust, lower adherence to public health advice, and illness and death from preventable diseases. A study estimated that mis- and disinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy for an estimated 2.35 million people in Canada between March and November 2021. By November 2021, without these refusals or delayed vaccinations, there could have been an estimated 198,000 fewer COVID-19 cases, 2,800 fewer deaths, and $299 million dollars saved in hospital costs."

The study sourced is a modelling simulation that predates the omicron variant where vaccination became irrelevant. The authors confirm it’s a useless simulation mock-up that blatantly ignores real-world happenings. “The Panel notes that this period preceded the spread of the Omicron variant. Given that vaccine efficacy was substantially diminished for this variant, additional data inputs would have been required for meaningful analysis of winter 2021-2022.”

Naturally, Tam’s report continues to urge Canadians to receive the latest COVID-19 mRNA formulations… every six months.

The document advocates for equitable emergency management and increased resources (i.e. funding) for public health, but the frilly, meaningless words just show how hypocritical this report is.

It’s chock-full of social justice jargon with very little tangible insight on how to uphold previously well-established pandemic response plans. Those were disregarded for knee-jerk hysteria and pledges of allegiance to global health architecture and the World Health Organization’s One Health approach, which they say requires “shared databases and surveillance” to work.

This contradicts local, community-driven initiatives, favouring instead a pharma-captured top-down health approach, whereas genuine health results from patient-centric, patient-driven care.