Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, is apparently an extraordinary polymath, expert not only in infectious diseases but also in global warming science. Thus she was able to turn her 2022 annual report on the state of public health in the country into a 105-page screed on climate change: “Mobilizing Public Health Action on Climate Change in Canada.” Typical of documents from this federal government, it is a call for increased government meddling couched in fashionably progressive language and ideology.

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According to Tam, without immediate and significant action climate change “poses catastrophic risks for present and future generations” and “the livability of the planet.” The report says that cities like New York and Shanghai, neither of which is in Canada of course, may be underwater within our lifetimes. To save the planet, the public health bureaucracy must take “assertive and effective action across jurisdictions and sectors.” How exceedingly convenient for Tam that with the pandemic now effectively over — COVID-19 being relegated to an appendix in her report — there is still this other alleged crisis whose management demands allowing her and her bureaucracy to maintain significant control over society.

Tam notes that the severity of climate change’s effect on health is influenced by “structural systems of oppression” such as colonization, racism, ableism, and heteronormativity. Citing articles from the American Journal of Public Health that carry such titles as “We Need Environmental Health Justice Research and Action for LGBTQ+ People” and “Queering Environmental Justice: Unequal Environmental Health Burden on the LGBTQ+ Community,” Tam laments that climate adaptation efforts have not had enough focus on the experiences of the LGBTQ2S+ population.

Acting as jurist as well as environmental scientist and infectious disease doctor, Tam argues that “concepts of justice are also important for climate action.” Having already cited literature on queering environmental justice, she proceeds to argue for Indigenous environmental justice, which requires “a concurrent focus on Indigenous knowledge systems, legal orders, governance, and concepts of justice.” The focus on justice also means, according to Tam, prioritizing youth and elevating their status as activist leaders. On whether children should be encouraged to skip school to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to climate conferences, her report does not express an opinion.

Tam envisions an important role for governmental public health in fighting the alleged climate crisis — and presumably therefore considerable power and funding for her bureaucracy. Public health needs to act on climate mitigation and adaptation. It must enter into “climate efforts across jurisdictions and levels of government.” The government should “implement a range of interventions” to address the health risks of climate change. Public health should expand its mandate to anything that may be remotely related to health promotion: for example, advocacy for affordable housing since it is related to people’s “climate vulnerability.”

The list goes on. Public health should provide leadership in greening playgrounds, support various Indigenous projects, undertake public education programs about climate change risks and conduct climate-change assessments, among other population health assessments. In such assessments, according to the report, Indigenous knowledge should for some reason be prioritized. The report also proposes new mental health programs to address climate anxiety. A less circular route to address anxiety might be for the public health bureaucracy to stop issuing reports saying the planet may soon be unlivable. But that would require fewer bureaucrats and smaller budgets.

A table in the report that details “essential public health functions” lists advocacy for affordable housing, climate change education and so on as examples of climate-related public health activities. In fact, Canada’s “essential public health functions” were first developed in 2003 during the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Containing and preventing the spread of disease — that is, controlling a negative externality — does fit the definition of legitimate governmental public health activity. That in the two decades since then the public health bureaucracy has decided to branch out into climate change activism and affordable housing policy is yet another demonstration of government’s tendency to expand without limit.

Indeed, instead of concluding that Theresa Tam is a brilliant polymath, a reasonably skeptical person might suspect her 105-page climate report is little more than a regurgitation of alarmist climate theories and dubious arguments designed mainly to increase the power and scope of the federal public health bureaucracy. For those who read the report, doubt that it might be anything else begins at once and only grows.

Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.