Ottawa: Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said the federal government’s spending on so-called COVID-19 quarantine hotels is a matter of concern. “This kind of spending at a Calgary hotel in 2022 is legitimately flabbergasting,” Garner said.
According to the response to a question submitted by Garner in November, it was informed that the federal government spent $6,790,717. 46 to use the Westin Calgary Airport Hotel as a quarantine facility. In 2022, 15 people were quarantined at the same hotel and the cost per capita was $ 452,714.50.
Garner said the government’s waste has always been a big problem. But in this era of inflation, such a waste is not right and it does not seem that Trudeau has any desire to rein it in. The Westin Calgary Airport Hotel was a quarantine facility from June 22, 2020, to October 30, 2022. This information was given by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
Over a period of two-and-a-half years, 1,490 people were quarantined at the hotel and in return, the hotel earned close to $27 million at $18,000 per person.
The federal government’s condition of hotel quarantine expired in August 2021. But the contracts with these hotels still continued and the government did nothing to curb this expenditure.
“Now that we are going through excessive inflation due to such expenses, it raises a variety of questions as to how many mismanagements were made by the government which are yet to come to the fore,” she said.
“During COVID-19, we’ve felt tremendous pain and seen countless deaths. So our main responsibility is to save lives and protect the health of Canadians,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
Under this process, people also had to stay in quarantine facilities during this period. “By adopting such standards and vaccination, we have been able to save thousands of lives as well as billions of dollars,” she added.