Public Safety Committee on March 10th, 2021

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Fair enough. It would appear, then, as if there absolutely were corrective measures that were required to be taken and there are some gaps at the front end.

Dr. Kochhar, has there been any end date discussed on this mandatory hotel quarantine?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, as I mentioned earlier, while we are incorporating these changes and continuing to gather data, there hasn't been any specific discussion on any end date. The OIC runs for a specific period of time as the course of the pandemic goes on, but there aren't any active discussions at this point.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Motz, you have about eight seconds.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Actually, I have about 30 seconds from when I started, according to my watch.

The report—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, the only watch that counts here is mine.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Then I will continue on with my question being as you interrupted me.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

No, you won't.

With that, I'm turning now to Madam Lambropoulos.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Chair, I have a point of order. I wanted to wait until Mr. Motz was done, as I didn't want to interrupt him.

I think it needs to be clear that Dr. Bogoch is here because it was in fact part of the motion that was passed. I added him to the name of witnesses, because I thought it was important to hear from someone independent.

He's here because it was part of a motion that was passed by the committee. I want that to be very clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Well—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I would like to speak to that, Chair.

The motion actually did not include it. It was at a point afterwards. I would challenge the clerk to find the references to that in our last committee meeting. That is not exactly what happened.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Well, we have a point of contention between the two of you which is not going to be resolved this evening.

With that, we will have Madam Lambropoulos.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here to continue answering our questions on this issue.

Obviously what happened in Montreal and Oakville is completely unacceptable. Nobody thinks something like that should ever happen. It's completely unfortunate that it happened.

What can the Government of Canada do, and which department would be responsible to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, maybe I'll start and have colleagues jump in from the law enforcement point of view.

As was mentioned earlier, we are making sure that all of our facilities are given complete guidelines, and reiterating the point, making sure that the proper procedures are followed and the security is proper. It's a constant check-in. We also engage in making sure that all of the people who are in the facilities.... We actually reach out through phone calls and in other ways. That also allows us to make sure they are safe and in an overall safe environment.

In reality, what we are trying to do is to make sure that we work together with the hotel association, the security—which we have contracted—as well as the law enforcement, in terms of making sure there is nothing that increases in any way the risk of anybody being exposed to those sorry events which happened earlier.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

I'm sure that is not something that was foreseeable. With regard to the Montreal incident, especially, I don't think that it happened at the hands of anybody who was hired by the government. It was another traveller who had gone into a room and assaulted a woman or made her feel threatened and uncomfortable.

Do you think that anything could have been done beforehand that would have prevented it? I know that you just explained what could be done in the future. Do you think that anything could have been put in place earlier in order to make sure that this kind of incident didn't occur?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Again, as mentioned earlier, this was an unfortunate and unforeseeable event.

The way we have our DQFs, they were supposed to be very much a secure place for travellers to isolate at that point. It's not really something that we envisioned in any way, shape or form.

This is a lesson learned for us and a lesson learned in general to make sure that we are more diligent in terms of making sure that these facilities are secure and have an added layer of security to them.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

I'm not sure if this question has already been raised and if it's been answered, because it's a three-hour long meeting, and I may have checked out a couple of times.

I read that people were being told not to mention where they were being located. Is that true? Are people allowed to contact their families and tell them where they are when they are being quarantined? I imagine there are only a few hotels that are listed that they can even be at.

Can you provide any clarity to that?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Brigitte, can you take that one?

[Brigitte Diogo]

Yes, I will take that question.

Guests at the designated quarantine facility have access to Internet and the phone in their room. We do not prohibit travellers from contacting family and indicating their location.

As the Government of Canada, we are very much concerned about the privacy, security and safety of the travellers at our facilities. It is true that we do not advertise the locations of the hotels, but guests who are at the hotels are not prohibited from disclosing where they are. In fact, they are aware of where they are.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

With that, we have Madam Michaud.

You have two and a half minutes, please.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In the case of the assault that took place at the Sheraton in Montreal, the victim said that it took 15 to 20 minutes before hotel security came to her assistance.

Interestingly, in Taiwan, a man was fined 3,000 euros for leaving his room for eight seconds. So people are very much under surveillance.

Under the Quarantine Act, the minister may appoint screening officers or quarantine officers.

Are there agents on site in the hotels? If so, how many are there?

If not, have clear guidelines been given to the selected hotels to ensure the safety of travellers during their quarantine?

[Brigitte Diogo]

Thank you for the question.

The incident you are talking about happened at a quarantine site that is managed by our agency. I can't speak to the details of the incident, but I can tell you that there are quarantine officers, security officers, and other partners, such as the Red Cross and screening officers, on site. So there is a lot of staff on site. That's all I can tell you about this incident.

In this quarantine area, there were many more people present who would have intervened during the incident. However, the police have been given a detailed account of the incident and are dealing with it at this time.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Has there been a lot more screening or quarantine officers since this incident, or was there already a lot at that time?

[Brigitte Diogo]

The number of staff in a quarantine area really depends on the type of hotel, its configuration and the number of people in it. Certainly, since the incident, we have increased security in the quarantine areas of the four cities where international flights land. We have also done so because there are demonstrations in some cities and—