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.
It’s a shocking waste of taxpayer money that should leave everyone asking how many more hotels saw similar cases of egregious waste.
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.
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.
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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It’s a shocking waste of taxpayer money that should leave everyone asking how many more hotels saw similar cases of egregious waste.
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.
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.
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.
LILLEY: Trudeau government spent $6.8 million on Calgary COVID hotel for just 10 people
A COVID quarantine facility saw just 10 people stay in the last several months of operation but it still cost taxpayers $6.8 million.
