Quarantine Act Clarification
In our ongoing effort to provide the most up to date interpretation and application of the Quarantine Act, we believe that this follow up post is necessary.
We are reading many of your comments and want to clarify, and address some of the main questions that are being asked.
More restrictive measures have been enacted by the Federal government. This includes mandatory hotel quarantine and covid tests. Please refer to yesterday’s post and our initial Quarantine Act post.
Section 71 states that travellers who refuse to comply with these Emergency Orders could face fines up to $750k and/or imprisonment up to 6 months.
There have been reports of travellers refusing these orders and exiting the airport with a ticket. This is because there is no arrest authority for failing to comply with these specific orders. The arrest authority within the act must be based on reasonable and probable grounds that a traveller has a communicable disease and is refusing to comply with the legislation.
That being said travellers refusing the orders could be charged by way of summons at a later date.
If charges are laid the obvious Charter challenges arise. Canadians’ mobility rights under section 6 allow for all Canadians and permanent residence to leave and return to Canada.
Furthermore, there have been reports that many travellers, who are willing to quarantine in a hotel, have been unable to make arrangements through the current system the government has in place.
This legislation was never meant to respond to a global pandemic. It is not feasible, or necessary, to require every Canadian or permanent resident entering the country to submit to a Covid test and quarantine in a hotel.
It was meant to deal with smaller scale regional outbreaks of infectious disease. It’s easy to apply this legislation to a few flights coming in from a particular country or region. It falls apart when you try to apply it to everything all the time
You can find all the information we reference in the Quarantine Act
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