National Post (National Edition)

Quarantine hotels like jail: CEO's lawsuit

`I now live in East Germany, and I'm a prisoner'

- CHRISTOPHE­R NARDI

OTTAWA • From a house on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the CEO of a Canadian cannabis company is asking the federal court to quash the Trudeau government's “arbitrary and capricious” decision to “incarcerat­e" travellers returning to the country in quarantine hotels.

“I personally woke up the morning that that was announced, and said `Holy s---, I now live in East Germany, and I'm a prisoner of the Government of Canada',” said Jeffrey Rath, barrister and constituti­onal law expert at Rath & Company, referring to new quarantine measures announced by the federal government in late January.

Rath filed the lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Dominic Colvin, the CEO of cannabis company CannaPharm­aRx who is afraid of being “unconstitu­tionally” forced (the lawsuit reads “incarcerat­ed”) into a quarantine hotel if he returns to his home in Kelowna, B.C.

Colvin flew to his home on Saint Martin on Jan. 24, 2021, at a time when a government travel advisory strongly discourage­d any non-essential travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A few days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced strict new measures to dissuade Canadians from travelling abroad as the country grapples with the spread of the novel coronaviru­s, including a mandatory threeday quarantine in government-selected hotels upon return at a cost of up to $2,000.

The lawsuit comes at a time of ongoing debate in Canada and elsewhere over the extent at which the government should be able to impose harsh lockdowns and travel restrictio­ns on the public.

Colvin is afraid that if he were to fly back to Canada within the next few weeks, he'll be forced by the government to quarantine in a hotel (which he calls a “quarantine incarcerat­ion facility” in his lawsuit) instead of at home because he says he's not sure he'll satisfy the government­s' unclear definition of a “suitable quarantine plan.”

“The decision to incarcerat­e Canadian citizens returning to Canada made by the (government) puts my right to freely return to Canada at risk as I cannot return to Canada under the threat of arbitrary incarcerat­ion for an undetermin­ed period of time,” Colvin wrote.

He was not available for an interview on Thursday, but his lawyer spoke to National Post on his behalf.

“Mr. Colvin is quite comfortabl­y ensconced in a house on Saint Martin with access to a beach every day. So he doesn't want to leave Saint Martin to come back and face arbitrary incarcerat­ion measures that have been promulgate­d by a government that clearly doesn't know what it's doing,” Rath said.

Currently, federal rules allow public health officials to force travellers arriving in Canada to stay up to 14 days (or longer if they end up testing positive for COVID-19) in government-run sites notably if they can't show a proper two-week quarantine plan.

Trudeau's updated plan to force all travellers entering Canada to spend three days in a federally overseen hotel has not officially come into force. The government is expected to release additional details as well as an effective date for the new measures as early as Friday.

“By putting in place these tough measures now, we can look forward to a better time when we can all plan those vacations. Our government is committed to the safe restart and recovery of the Canadian travel and tourism sector as soon as conditions improve, ideally later this year,” Trudeau said at the time of the announceme­nt.

But even if the mandatory three-day quarantine rule isn't yet officially in effect, Colvin is asking the federal court to strike it down in advance because he argues that the government is already forcing some people without quarantine plans or recent negative COVID-19 tests into supervised federal sites.

“It's just completely outrageous what they're doing,” Rath said. “We're judicially reviewing that decision to incarcerat­e people because it's obvious that they're already doing it.”

Colvin and Rath aren't the only Canadians to oppose the government's efforts to limit travel abroad by enforcing increasing­ly strict quarantine and travel rules.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Snowbird Associatio­n wrote a letter to Transport Minister Omar Alghabra saying it was “firmly opposed” to the mandatory hotel quarantine rule.

`The CSA believes that the existing quarantine protocols should remain in place and travellers should be permitted to quarantine in their own homes. To force Canadian citizens to pay over $2,000 ... will be a financial hardship for many,” CSA president Karen Huestis wrote.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada