Canadian Quarantine Hotel Headaches Continue: Price-Gouging, Bad Food and More

March 4, 2021 Jim Byers

A family that was charged more than $3,400 for a 15-hour stay. Travellers allowed to go straight home because hotels were full. And ongoing complaints about bad food and a seeming lack of preparation.

The Trudeau government has been criticized for being late with vaccines and for muddled COVID-19 messaging. Now you can add a flurry of criticism for its mandatory hotel quarantine program.

As of February 22, anyone flying into Canada is supposed to be tested for COVID-19 at one of four airports open to international flights. They’re then required to check into one of a couple dozen government-approved hotels for up to three days – at their own cost – while they await their test results.

The program has been riddled with problems, with critics labelling it “ill-conceived” and a “total boondoggle.”

As reported by Canadian Travel News this week, some travellers are arriving in Canada and being told hotels are full. Those fliers are allowed to go straight home for their mandatory 14-day quarantine, potentially saving thousands of dollars and avoiding up to three nights in a cramped hotel room with food that appears to be taken out of your average Canadian prison cafeteria.

CTV reports a family who had to fly to Portugal for a funeral was forced to pay nearly $3,500 for a Toronto hotel room. Their tests came back negative the next day but they had to pay for a three-night stay that rose to $3,458 with taxes and fees.

Cristina Teixeira said it was a nightmare returning to Canada from her father’s funeral.

“The stress that we were put under is inconceivable,” Teixeira told CTV News Toronto. “As a Canadian citizen, I can tell you this is wrong on so many levels. We’ve never experienced something like this.”

Even the Globe and Mail editorial board has jumped into the fray. In an editorial this week, the paper said other countries have managed to figure out proper quarantine plans, and that the Trudeau government gave itself a month to figure out how to do its three-day program.

Their editorial said that “the result was widely reported as chaos, starting with travellers trying to follow the law by booking a room and continuing into the hotels themselves.”

Exactly.

The Liberals set up a PHONE LINE for people to call to make reservations, not understanding that it’s far too expensive for someone in, say, India or Argentina, to dial a phone number in Montreal and wait on the line for hours. Hello, Ottawa, there’s this new tool called the World Wide Web. You should give it a go.

Then we have the hotels, most of which have kitchens and restaurants and should be able to deliver a hot breakfast to a room before 9:30 a.m., or a plate of spaghetti and meatballs that’s actually warm.

Clearly, not enough people in the federal government thought this through. Nobody said, “Hey, what about people with dietary restrictions,” or “What about returning students who can’t be left alone in a hotel for up to 72 hours without a parent?”

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner has been a vocal critic of the hotel quarantine plan.

“Over the past week, horrifying reports of sexual assault, unsafe and deplorable conditions at federal quarantine hotel facilities have emerged,” she said this week. “We have heard reports that it is taking hours to get through to book these hotels, dietary restrictions are not being met, and food and water are not always readily available.

“We can protect Canada from an influx of new cases by using the tools already at our disposal: pre and post-arrival rapid testing and at-home quarantine, without subjecting them to this type of deplorable treatment,” she said.

“It is time for the government to permanently bring an end to this deeply flawed program and replace it with a more effective system of enhanced pre- and post-arrival testing for international travellers and better and safer enforcement of the at-home quarantine,” Rempel Garner said. “Canada’s Conservatives will continue to call for the government to enact a real plan to protect Canadians in the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This was clearly a slapdash, last-minute affair. And both Canadians and visitors are paying the price.

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