That Calgary hotel where the Trudeau government spent $6.8 million from last April through October to house just 10 guests was one of 38 such hotels.
The government has now confirmed there were 38 hotels under the “Designated Quarantine Facility” label spread across 14 cities.
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Just like in Calgary, the money was spent over three years with about 20% of it coming in fiscal 2022/23, which started last April 1.
“In total, $388.7 million was spent on DQFs between April 2020 to December 2022,” a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed to the Sun. “That includes $158.5 million in fiscal year 2020/21, $153 million in 2021/22, and $77.2 million in 2022/23.”
The 38 facilities were located in Whitehorse, Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Fredericton, Halifax and St. John’s. A breakdown of costs by city and by hotel has not been provided at this time, nor has the number of guests who used the facilities.
In Calgary, the government block booked the Westin near the airport from June 2020 through October 30, 2022 at a total cost of $31.3 million. With just 1,490 passengers staying in that time that works out to an average of $21,000 per guest.
The shocking part was that between April 1 and October 30, 2022 the hotel saw just 10 guests total with one guest in April, six in May, two in June, one in September and none in July, August or October. Still, the hotel remained fully booked by the government rather than reducing the number of rooms to something that matched the needs of the program.
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LILLEY: Trudeau government spent $6.8 million on Calgary COVID hotel for just 10 people
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The government’s defence of all of this is to claim they were trying to keep Canadians safe from COVID-19.
“Because of these measures and vaccinations in addition, we have saved together, Mr. Speaker, tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars in economic cost,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told the Commons on Tuesday when asked to defend the outrageous costs in Calgary alone.
That would have been an acceptable defence in 2020 but not for paying for empty hotels in 2022. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was so much we didn’t know about COVID, there was plenty of fear and plenty of misinformation.
By the time 2022 came around, the vast majority of the population was vaccinated, anyone who wanted a shot had received one, or three, and by the start of the 2022/23 fiscal year, things were getting back to normal. Yet, the federal government kept paying for these hotels, the full hotels in 14 cities across 38 locations.
There is no excuse for $77.2 million to have been paid for hotels that no one was using.
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The Trudeau government has been found to have paid CERB to dead people and prisoners, there was $15 billion in questionable payments to businesses according to the auditor general and the government says it’s not worth looking into the matter.
At every turn, when waste or mismanagement has been exposed, their response is the claim they saved lives and anyone asking questions would have let people die from COVID.
That’s not an acceptable answer.
We know that this is a big spending government, one that always wants to spend more while you have less to show for the taxes you pay. A September 2020 report from the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated a staggering $328 billion deficit for that year but only $226 billion of that was due to COVID, the rest was new spending elsewhere.
Between the April 2022 budget and the November 2022 fall economic statement, the Trudeau government added an additional $20 billion in new spending.
Canadians deserve more answers on these hotel costs, more answers on this waste, not to be talked down to about the need for the government to protect us.
blilley@postmedia.com