The federal government admits it spent nearly $400 million of taxpayer dollars over on its designated COVID-19 quarantine facilities during the pandemic.
Figures supplied to the media by the Public Health Agency of Canada state that the government spent more than $388 million to run 38 designated quarantine sites across the country between March 2020 and September 2022.
The facilities were consistently criticized as overpriced and badly managed, with people complaining bitterly about poor food, cold meals and crowded lobbies with would-be quarantine passengers mingling together.
“DQF’s (Designated Quarantine Facilities) and alternate sites were active in a total of 14 cities across Canada: Whitehorse, Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Fredericton, Halifax and St. John’s,” said Tammy Jarbeau, a spokesperson for PHAC and Health Canada.
“In total, $388.7 million was spent on DQFs between April 2020 to December 2022.”
“The costs associated with this program included lodging, meals, security, traveller support and transportation,” said Jarbeau. “The Government of Canada has always worked to protect Canadians, adapting our COVID-19 response based on the latest science and evidence.
“Designated quarantine facilities met public health guidelines for the purposes of accommodating travellers to quarantine as required by emergency orders under the Quarantine Act,” she said.
The Calgary Herald reports that the news comes after Alberta MP Michelle Rempel Garner revealed that the Trudeau government spent more than $6 million at the Westin in Calgary in 2022, even though the hotel hosted only 15 people for quarantine purposes.
“This is just something that I think will really hit home with a lot of Canadians of all political stripe, at a time where we’re really struggling to make ends meet and we’re really talking about affordability on lodging, on housing,” Rempel Garner said in an interview with Global News on Tuesday.
It also has been revealed that Ottawa spent roughly $44 million for the derided ArriveCAN app that passengers were forced to complete before entering Canada. Many experts said the job could have been done for a fraction of that amount, and even Trudeau called federal bureaucrats onto the carpet and demanded an explanation.
