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Between April 1 and Oct. 30, 2022, the Trudeau government spent $6.8 million booking a single Calgary hotel to accommodate just 10 people for COVID quarantine.
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It’s a shocking waste of taxpayer money that should leave everyone asking how many more hotels saw similar cases of egregious waste.
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Paying $6.8 million for just 10 people from April to October, an average of $680,000 per person, is indefensible and makes Justin Trudeau’s $6,000 per night London hotel rooms look like a bargain.
Any time the Trudeau government has been asked to explain outrageous COVID spending, they have deflected by saying they had Canadians backs during the pandemic. This isn’t having anyone’s back; this is picking our pockets for wasteful spending.
The Calgary Airport Westin was named a Designated Quarantine Facility under the Quarantine Act on June 22, 2020. Between that date and when the contract expired last October, the federal government paid the hotel $26.8 million to be available for passengers who had no other place to quarantine.
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This wasn’t one of the facilities the government forced people into in 2021 while waiting for their test results, this was as a quarantine facility.
In addition to the amount paid to the hotel, the federal government also paid the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires $1.7 million for security, $41,000 for medical transportation services, another $4,600 for bus services, nearly $1.5 million to the Canadian Red Cross for traveller support services and $1.1 million for cleaning services.
Add on the $35,000 the government paid for repairs, and we get a grand total of $31.3 million or an average of about $21,000 for each of the 1,490 people who stayed there over the past three years.
Were this spending at the beginning of the pandemic when we still really didn’t know what was going on — when it was panic mode for every level of government — it would be understandable, but this was happening just a few short months ago.
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Who keeps booking an entire hotel to quarantine air travellers when you are getting zero passengers in a month, or two at most?
“There’s no justification for this; COVID quarantine restrictions were eased long before this time,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said in the Commons Tuesday.
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Rempel Garner, who uncovered this mess, noted that the cost per person in the last months of this contract could pay for a beautiful home in her City of Calgary.
“So, two questions: How many other hotels did this happened at? And has anybody been fired for this waste?” Rempel Garner asked.
True to form, the government response focused on protecting people and claiming that is what this was about.
“We’re all very mindful of the terrible pain and the large number of deaths and the even larger number of hospitalizations that we have seen in Canada over COVID-19,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos responded. “Because of these measures and vaccinations in addition, we have saved together, Mr. Speaker, tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars in economic cost.”
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Duclos didn’t come close to dealing with the fact that between April 1 and Oct. 30, the government spent $6.8 million to house just 10 people for quarantine reasons.
The Trudeau government used the pandemic to increase spending dramatically, in areas like this where there was obvious waste, and in areas where the spending wasn’t related to COVID at all. They can’t keep claiming that all of this spending had to happen, or people would have died.
That is their current defence, and it is insulting to Canadians.
For much of the pandemic, international air travel was restricted to Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. That means there were more hotels like this and more waste.
The government needs to stop lying to Canadians, stop pretending this was about saving lives, and be honest regarding their waste and incompetence.
A breakdown of hotel costs
Cost to the federal government to rent the hotel by fiscal year
For year 2020/21 – $8,920,071.72
For year 2021/22 – $11,134,287.56
For year 2022/23 – $6,790,717.46
Additional Costs
Canadian Corps of Commissionaires – $1,759,079.93
Aaron Paramedical – $41,383.22
Fenton Bus Services – $4,600.00
Canadian Red Cross – $1,487,200.23
Winmar – cleaning – $1,139,069.47
Post departure repairs – $35,265.32