Question Period Note: Designated Quarantine Facilities

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A Written Question (Q-998) was recently tabled regarding contracts with the Westin Calgary Airport hotel and the Acclaim Calgary airport hotel for the provision of quarantine facilities and accommodations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On January 30, 2023, Michelle Rempel Garner published an article showing that the government spent over $450,000 per person on hotel rooms.

Key Messages
• Protecting the health and safety of Canadians is the Government of Canada’s top priority. During the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining quarantine facilities was an important part of our plan to protect Canadians.
• The Agency’s approach to border measures, like its guidance and advice, has evolved during the pandemic and continues to be informed by the latest available scientific evidence, epidemiology, and expert opinion, which can change as new information becomes available.
• Several other countries that had quarantine hotels for travellers, continued these programs into 2022, including New Zealand and Hong Kong.

If pressed on expenditures (provisional data not previously published only as accounting continues given program recently cancelled)
• $388.7 million was expended on Designated Quarantine Facilities between April 2020 to December 2022.
• $158.5 million in 2020-21, $153 million in 2021-22, and $77.2 million in 2022 23.
• Quarantine facilities have been maintained by the government to quarantine travelers who could not safely quarantine at home. Maintaining these facilities, as a contingency, was an important part of protecting Canadians.
If pressed on Assault Charges
• In February 2021, a man was charged by local police with sexual assault, break and enter, and harassment at the Sheraton Montreal Designated Quarantine Facility. The victim was a quarantined traveller. Any questions on this should be referred to local police.

Travellers arriving in Canada, on or after October 1, 2022, are no longer required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter Canada, nor are they required to meet COVID 19 testing, quarantine or isolation requirements, including stays at a designated quarantine facility as directed by a quarantine officer.
Between March 2020 and September 2022, a total of 38 sites were designated as quarantine facilities. Upon the elimination of the border measures on October 1, 2022, the Public Health Agency of Canada was managing 17 Designated Quarantine Facilities, and had access to rooms in one provincial site, with a total room capacity of 1,465 rooms for travellers in 14 cities across Canada.
 

• Quarantine Facilities were designated under Section 7 of the Quarantine Act. The costs associated with this program included lodging, meals, security, traveller support and transportation.
• A total of 22,188 travellers were quarantined or isolated at Designated Quarantine Facilities between March 22, 2020 and September 30, 2022.