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House Hansard - 154

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 6, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 154 - Feb/6/23
Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, CPC)
  • Feb/6/23 7:03:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, last week, I found out that the government spent $6.7 million in fiscal year 2022 to house 10 people at a Calgary area quarantine hotel, which works out to about $670,000 per person. I asked a very simple question in the House: Was anyone fired for this? The government did not even acknowledge that this was a problem. I want to say why this is a problem, just so that, before I ask the question again, my colleague opposite understands. First of all, fiscal year 2022, which was April 2022 onwards, was after most of the world had already lifted virtually all COVID restrictions. This was after the Government of Canada and most provincial governments and municipalities had eased COVID restrictions. This was after the government's own panel of experts said that the quarantine hotel was not necessary. This was after months of the government refusing to show any data that home quarantine could not provide the same capacity of preventing the spread of COVID that hotel quarantine did. There was no justification for this expense. This expense was incurred even though the government had the option to end the contract with these hotels with a 30-day notice period. It did not end these contracts until after this outrageous amount of money had been spent. To me, this boils down very simply to an incompetent government that is not doing its job. It is not monitoring public expense, and at a time when inflationary spending is creating a cost of living crisis, every penny counts. The government cannot afford to be spending the same price as a beautiful two-bedroom home five minutes away from this hotel on a program that there is no justifiable reason to have. There was no justification to spend that amount of money, particularly in fiscal year 2022. When I asked the question in the House, and I remember it vividly, the minister did not even say, “This was a problem and we should have ended it. I am looking into it to make sure this is not happening in other hotels, and I assure the Canadian public we want to be good stewards of tax dollars. I will fire somebody over this. Somebody deserves to be fired over allowing waste like this to happen.” In the ensuing week since this exchange happened, we found out that it was not just happening at this one Calgary hotel. There were dozens of hotels across the country where this type of waste happened in fiscal year 2022 after COVID restrictions had been lifted. I am just going to ask my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, the question again: Has somebody been fired over this waste?
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Context: House Hansard - 154 - Feb/6/23
Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner
  • Feb/6/23 7:10:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that $670,000 a person on 10 people, that happened after restrictions had been lifted, long after restrictions had been lifted. This program should have been cancelled. The government should have phoned the hotels and said that we cannot afford to waste the same amount of money it would cost to gift a family who is struggling with a house. Nobody did that. It cost our country millions and millions of dollars, unnecessarily. It could have been used on health care. It could have been used on anything else. It was flat out waste. Somebody needs to be held to account for it. My colleague said he is not HR, that he cannot say he would be fired. Does he at least agree that someone should be fired for wasting this money? Will he commit to holding his government to account to make sure there are consequences for its waste?
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