When Canada relaxed its entry regulations to permit fully vaccinated returning Canadians, Americans and international travellers to arrive in Canada, it also ended the despised mandatory hotel quarantine program.
Now we are learning via the CBC that, during the time that the hotel quarantine program was operational, the Public Health Agency of Canada issued 5,315 fines to non-compliant arriving travellers.
But none of them was in Alberta. And maybe not Montreal, either.
During the height of the pandemic, only four Canadian airports were designated to accept international arrivals: YVR, YYC, YYZ, and YUL.
Those four airports were supposed to be implementing identical, COVID-busting federal government protocols for arriving pax, including, for several months this year, mandatory hotel quarantines that cost travellers upwards of $2000. Refusing to quarantine in a hotel risked a fine of $3000 - $5000, plus added fees.
According to the report, almost all - 4,711 - of those fines were issued to pax arriving in Toronto, with 601 issued to scofflaws arriving in Vancouver. “The remaining three involved Montreal arrivals. However, PHAC clarified in a footnote that it's unknown if those three cases actually resulted in fines. None of the fines were issued in Calgary.”
That’s way out of proportion to the numbers of actual arrivals, with Statistics Canada revealing that over 400,000 non-essential air travellers entered Canada during the busiest three-month period for the hotel quarantine system: MAR - JUN this year. Half landed in Toronto, with 95-thousand in Montreal, 80-thousand in Vancouver, and 34-thousand in Calgary.
If scofflaws are roughly evenly distributed throughout Canada, that would suggest that Calgary actually had between 600-700 arrivals who refused to quarantine in a hotel, and Montreal closer to a thousand -they just weren’t fined.
Passing the Buck
Apparently, the Public Health Agency of Canada told CBC its officers couldn’t fine scofflaws at YYC because Alberta “never adopted the federal Contraventions Act. But the agency said police in Alberta could issue the fines and suggested checking with police for up-to-date statistics.”
On their parts, Alberta RCMP and the Calgary police confirmed they had issued no fines. During the height of hotel quarantines, Calgary police told CBC they could only investigate if they received a complaint - and apparently none were forthcoming from the PHAC.
In the case of Montreal scofflaws, the PHAC said only provincial prosecutors - not PHAC officers - could fine quarantine offenders. Quebec provincial prosecutions officials could not provide any data on the number of fines - or even confirm if any had been issued.
"This was way too easy"
The report also spoke to a number of travellers who managed to bypass hotel quarantines - as well as the penalty for refusing them.
One returning Canadian who evaded quarantine told CBC, "This was way too easy." The fully-vaccinated traveller felt she could safely quarantine alone in her own home, and actually switched her flight to arrive in Calgary rather than via Vancouver “after reading scores of posts on social media from people who said they landed in Calgary, refused to go to a quarantine hotel and didn't get fined,” CBC says.
On her part, the traveller calls the hotel quarantine rules - and their enforcement - “an absolute joke.
"There were two police officers standing there and they just smiled at me and said, 'Hi.'
"You might as well say, 'OK everybody, just fly back to Alberta. You don't have to worry about a single fine.'"
Payback Time?
The uneven enforcement has some travellers - and lawyers - crying foul.
"This wasn't a program that was sort of implemented fairly, necessarily, across the board," said Cara Zwibel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's fundamental freedoms program.
The CBC spoke to several travellers who were fined for refusing to quarantine on arrival in Toronto or Vancouver - and are fighting their fines, in one case of over $6000. Their stance is that they shouldn’t have to pay if other scofflaws weren’t fined at all - and that the law was not fair as no hotel quarantine was required of land arrivals.
"All these things make it unjust. It's just an unjust law,” one told CBC.
While they have yet to see their day in court, Zwibel agrees the quarantine program was inconsistent, flawed - and unnecessary.
"The reality is that the law can't solve every problem, and this is one instance where I think the law was not very effective," she said. "There are other tools that probably work better, tools like public education."
As Open Jaw previously reported in JUN, less than 1 per cent of hotel quarantine scofflaws subsequently tested positive for the virus.
