The federal government paid over $6.7 million last year for COVID-19 quarantine rooms in a Calgary-area hotel used by only 15 travellers, according to an Inquiry of Ministry recently tabled in the House of Commons.
The Westin Calgary Airport hotel—which the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) designated as a quarantine facility under Section 7 of the Quarantine Act in June 2020—housed just 15 quarantined travellers from January 2022 until the end of September, for which it received over $6.7 million from the federal government.
The information was included in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled by the Liberal government in the House on Jan. 30, in response to an order paper question submitted in November 2022 by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner.
In total, 1,490 travellers were quarantined at the Westin Calgary Airport hotel between June 22, 2020, and Oct. 1, 2022, as part of Ottawa’s pandemic travel restrictions that required people returning to Canada from abroad to stay at designated hotels.
However, 1,475 of the total travellers (99 percent) stayed in the hotel in 2020 and 2021.
The Inquiry provided a year-by-year breakdown of travellers quarantined in the hotel throughout the duration of federal COVID border measures, the last of which was lifted on Oct. 1, 2022.
In 2020, 119 travellers were quarantined at the hotel, for which the federal government paid over $8.9 million.
In 2021, 1,356 travellers were quarantined at the hotel, which received over $11.1 million from Ottawa.
Ottawa also paid additional costs for other services at the hotel provided by third parties, such as transportation and cleaning services.
Between June 2020 and October 2022, the federal government paid over $1.7 million to the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires for security services, around $1.4 million to the Canadian Red Cross for traveller-support services, and $1.1 million to Winmar for cleaning services, along with other smaller costs to companies for transportation services.
The Inquiry notes that since there was “a manual collection of information” involved in gathering the data on third-party expenses, it’s possible that there is “a small degree of human error” when determining the amount the federal government paid the Calgary hotel.
Furthermore, after the hotel was delisted as a designated quarantine facility, PHAC agreed to pay the hotel an additional $35,265 to cover “basic remediation costs not related to normal wear and tear” in order to cover any possible damages to the property caused by implementing health measures for quarantined travellers.
Rempel Garner, who requested the information, said she was “legitimately flabbergasting” after seeing the costs.
She wrote in a Jan. 30 article that the Inquiry also shows Ottawa could have cancelled the contract designating the hotel as a quarantine facility at any time after giving 30-days notice, but only did so in late September 2022 “long after travel restrictions had been eased.”
“Why was this contract maintained after travel restrictions had been lifted? How did no one catch that this was happening? And this is just one quarantine hotel facility. How many more stories like this are there across the country?” Rempel Garner wrote.
The Epoch Times previously reported that PHAC also awarded $52 million in sole-sourced contracts using emergency powers to private security companies to help enforce its COVID-19 quarantine orders.
A PHAC spokesperson said the private contractors made 590,000 visits to verify quarantine compliance between Jan. 29, 2021, and Sept. 15, 2022.
Noé Chartier contributed to this report.