Returning to Canada During COVID

In the early months of 2020 I was in Bangkok, Thailand. I had been there for months and when COVID-19 hit I was stuck the same as everyone else there having to deal with restrictions, curfews and that general unknowing of what was happening. It all seems like a lifetime ago but in fact it was only a year and few months from when I am writing this.

I am a Canadian passport holder. I was born in Niagara Falls and raised in a small bumpkin town outside Hamilton Ontario. Not really much to say there but it gives you some background on who I am.

When the pandemic started to hit North America, Thailand had won itself a victory against the first wave. Between fast actions by the government and the resilience and compliance of the Thai people, it seemed like COVID-19 was something that had come and gone. Shops started to open, restaurants allowed dine in and life although not totally normal, started to resume.

At that time the Canadian embassy was constantly pushing for Canadians to return to Canada. I decided to return so I could see what was happening, work a little bit and honestly because the government was asking us to return.

When I contacted the Canadian Embassy and told them I was willing to return but I needed to make arrangements like quarantine before I could consider it. Because the only family I could rely on was my mother and she worked in a retirement home and she herself was over 60, quarantine would need to be something I had setup before leaving, I could not just do this once I arrived with friends or family. The Canadian embassy told me by email that the Federal Government was arranging quarantine for those who did not have it and sent me a link to some release that Justin Trudeau had published saying he was promising returning Canadians quarantine if they did not have it. So I decided to leave.

The flight was long to get back to Canada and I ended up having a 12 hour layover at Incheon Airport in South Korea. It was like a ghost town. Finally I arrived in Vancouver and had to do the usual interrogation by Canadian Customs officers who accused me of having drugs, told me they would find the drugs, asked me if I had ever done drugs, etc. It's the most annoying part of flying into Canada, to have these jackass boarder patrol guards with a stick up their ass accuse you of being a drug addict or smuggler. But whatever.

After that fun ordeal I had to go speak to an official about getting quarantine once I arrived in Toronto. I walked over to a booth that looked similar to a lemonade stand and talked to this old hippy guy about quarantine. He told me he had no idea what I was talking about, that they did have a quarantine setup in Vancouver but he had no idea about Toronto or who to contact. He then went on to tell me I would be better off to fly back to where I had came from because the quarantine hotels were not only sketchy but in areas full of drug addicts and other fun types of people. Welcome to Canada I thought.

I then proceeded to try to find one of the officials that I was to report where I was quarantining to and give information like my phone number, email address, etc. When I finally found someone to ask where I needed to go, I was informed I needed to do that all on the air side of the airport not the domestic side. I was on the domestic side and now had no way to go report the issue to the "officers" that were to be monitoring and enforcing all these new rules. Here I started to notice there were some major issues with how this was all being handled. When I came in I didn't have quarantine. To get quarantine I had to talk to someone at a stand inside the domestic part or the airport. So I was allowed in without meeting any of the required criteria to be allowed into the country aside from having a passport. Then, once I asked about quarantine I was told I couldn't arrange it and even if I could I shouldn't.

So the Canadian Embassy knew I had no quarantine and insisted I return to Canada. They told me not to worry about quarantine it would be arranged and when I arrived that was all just not true. Unless they possibly notified Toronto airport ahead of me? That to me made sense so I didn't worry about it too much.

I then left the airport and went outside for a smoke. I had several actually out in the sun while passengers came and left around me. Had I been sick I would have infected most of them because they kept asking me for a light, sitting next to me and having conversations and just in general were very close to me in proximity because a smoking area is a fairly crowded place.

After spending 5 hours at the airport in Vancouver, eating fast food, hanging out in the common areas and just spreading germs everywhere I boarded my flight to Toronto. By then it was evening in Ontario and by the time I landed it was about 1 am.

Pearson International was empty. There was no one there. No one was working. I looked for any government employee to speak to and there just was no one there. I had landed on a domestic flight, not an international flight and no one was anywhere to be found. I again headed outside and had a smoke.

So now I was getting worried. Here I just came from Asia and was on 3 separate flights. In total I had spent 17 hours in airports, it was 1 am and I was in Toronto with no where to go.

Before I even talk about the ordeal of trying to rent a room or book an apartment at 1 am in Toronto in the peak of the first wave of COVID-19, I have to point this out again. The Canadian Embassy told me not to worry about quarantine because the Canadian Government, and most importantly Justin Trudeau had posted that they would supply quarantine to any Canadians who required it at that time. When I landed in Vancouver I told them I did not have quarantine and they told me to enter the country to talk to a man at a stand and make arrangements. I was told he couldn't do anything for me to quarantine in Toronto and I needed to ask there. When I went to tell the officers responsible for ensuring I followed these rules what had happened I couldn't because they were on the airside of the airport and I was now inside the country. Now I was in Toronto and free to go about my evening as I liked, the only issue was after a 24+ hour flight I had no where to stay.

I have to question how many times this happened. As you can imagine I made a scramble just to get a roof over my head and quarantine was the least of my worries. I ended up booking an Air BnB apartment on College Street in Toronto. Once I arrived there I thought I better contact the embassy in Bangkok and let them know what happened.

The next day I got a reply from the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok. It was a very rude email saying it was my responsibility to obtain quarantine and that they were not responsible for me arriving and not having it. The Federal Government was to have measures in place and that was that. They didn't even report me to Health Canada, they just rudely said in a nutshell that it wasn't their problem, oh well.

The next 2 weeks were pretty brutal. First I had to shell out money on an apartment I had no interest in renting. It was a basement apartment with no windows and certainly not suitable or healthy for a 2 week quarantine. Unfortunately it was all that was available for an instant book and self check-in online. I wasn't supposed to leave but I had no other option if I wanted to eat or have water to drink. I did my best to limit the amount I went to the grocery store but I did have to go out every 3 or 4 days in order to eat.

So needless to say this was all an epic fail by the Canadian Government and several of its offices. I really have to wonder how they allowed me to just walk into the country and not have any kinds of responsibility when it came to what they had promised me before I got there. We are now in an era where they are forcing these experimental vaccines on everyone to even go to the corner store and yet they allowed myself and I am sure countless other people enter the country unchecked and unmonitored in the beginning. Had they done their jobs and actually looked out for the well being of Canadian citizens would the pandemic have been so bad? Look back on how they handled things and how things are managed now I even have to ask an even more disturbing question. Was the government allowing COVID-19 into the country in the beginning to be spread?

Theories and questions aside one thing is for sure. When it came to handling people arriving to Canada in the start of the pandemic the Canadian Government failed horribly. Not only did they fail but Justin Trudeau flat out lied about provisions he would ensure were provided to Canadian citizens returning from overseas. After the fact they went way overboard and inflicted a crazy quarantine procedure that only lasted 3 days and cost most Canadians returning to the country more in the 3 days they had to stay in a hotel than it would to stay for a full week under normal circumstances.

Trudeau can think he and the Government handled the pandemic well as much as they like but from what I saw he is a failure. The beginning of any outbreak is crucial to making sure it doesn't spread. I know I am not the only Canadian with an experience like this but odds are I am probably one of the only ones who isn't afraid to admit it.