New hotel expense makes Trudeau’s $6000 night in London seem like little potatoes.

An order paper question response shows Trudeau's government spent $450,000 per person on hotel rooms.

Here’s a piping hot take on some big breaking news…..

Christmas came late as the House of Commons resumed today and delivered a flurry of official responses to something called "order paper questions." They’re a good tool for an opposition Member of Parliament like me to get more details on public expenditures and policies.

I had submitted one of these before the winter recess about the amount the federal government had recently spent on maintaining something colloquially called "quarantine hotels." For those who don't recall, during the pandemic, under various restrictions, the federal Liberal government required people returning to Canada from abroad to stay at designated hotels. 

I fought the program, particularly after there were allegations of sexual assault at some of the facilities, after there was no scientific evidence offered by the government that showed the program halted the spread of COVID better than home quarantine, and after the government's own expert panel recommended lifting travel restrictions in May 2021. 

But since the Trudeau government kept these restrictions for nearly a year after the release of this report, on a hunch, I submitted an order paper question to see how much the federal Liberals had spent on two quarantine hotel sites I knew had been in operation in Calgary.

The response that I just received a few hours ago was legitimately flabbergasting. 

In fiscal year 2022, long after the rest of the world had ended quarantine hotel restrictions and after the government had lifted travel restrictions, at one Calgary area hotel, the federal Liberal government spent $6,790,717.46 on lodging expenses for….

…..wait for it….

15 people.

That works out to $452,714.50 spent per person on a quarantine hotel after they ended most travel restrictions.

Worse, the response to my order paper question states that the government could cancel the contract after giving 30 day notice but only elected to do so sometime in late fall 2022, again, long after travel restrictions had been eased.

Why was this contract maintained after travel restrictions had been lifted? How did no one catch that this was happening? And this is just one quarantine hotel facility. How many more stories like this are there across the country?

Government waste is always a problem. But waste of this magnitude when deficit spending needs to be reined in due to inflationary pressures shows that Trudeau doesn't have the capacity or willingness to get things under control. $450,000 could have bought outright a really nice condo in the neighborhoods surrounding that hotel's location. Many folks in my community would have loved to have won that lottery. 

Trudeau already has personal optics problems with billing Canadians eyebrow-raising amounts for his travel. But those pale compared to the $450,000.00 per person hotel stays that his government signed off on when there was no justifiable reason for doing so.

It’s important that government expenses be scrutinized and that they are held to account when waste occurs. There are many other concerning aspects of the government's response to my question, which I intend to dig further into.

But for now, I encourage you to look at their response for yourself.