Every year, Colleen Robak and her husband Colby pack up their life in Europe and return home to Canada for the summer.
It’s a stressful ordeal. With two children under 4, two cats and more luggage and accessories than can fit in most cars, it’s almost always a long day of travel.
This year, it will be even longer.
Canada has brought in a three-day mandatory hotel stay for all residents and citizens arriving into the country by air.
The Robaks will have to book a three-night stay at a government-approved hotel before they can even board their plane home from Frankfurt, Germany.
The total cost of the stay can be more than C$2,000 ($1,603), a large sum for a family of four on a budget.
But it’s not the money that has them most concerned. “I just can’t imagine sitting in a hotel for three days with children and cats with no access to being on a patio or anything or fresh air. I don’t even know what the food is going to be like. Kids are picky eaters,” Ms Robak said.
Mr Robak is a professional hockey player in the German Ice Hockey League. He is on a long-term contract with the Schwenninger Wild Wings, but his visa will run out on May 30 when the season is over. That means they have little choice but to return home.
They’re not alone. Throughout European professional hockey leagues, there are hundreds of Canadian players and their families who, come the end of the season, will be forced to either live in Europe without a proper visa and no pay cheque, or hand over thousands of dollars for a mandatory hotel stay in Canada.
“These were costs that none of us had really planned for,” said Alison Hudson, whose husband, Carl, plays for the Eispiraten Crimmitschau in the German second league.
Like the Robaks, the Hudsons have been going back and forth between Canada and Europe for years. “We’re making a modest living that’s providing for our families and giving us over the past years opportunities to travel and experience new cultures.”
Ms Hudson has created a petition with more than 7,500 signatures asking the government to exempt hockey players from the mandatory three-day hotel stay.
"I know hockey is not an essential thing and we're not asking to travel to leave or to come back into Canada to play hockey. We're asking that we left for work purposes, and this is our financial livelihood; this is how my husband provides for our family," she told The National. "What we're asking for is that we can get an exemption from this based on the fact that we left months ago, way before any of these hotel quarantines were being discussed."
Many essential workers have been deemed exempt from the hotel stay, but the Canadian government seems unlikely to lift it for hockey players or athletes of any kind.
“The federal government is offering no exemption to quarantine-related travel restrictions to Canadian high-performance athletes,” said Tammy Jarbeau, a senior media relations adviser for Health Canada.
The new restrictions, which came into effect on February 22, have caused panic among Canadians abroad. The Facebook group Canada Hotel Quarantine for Returning Travellers has nearly 4,500 members and thousands of posts from upset and concerned Canadians.
The page is meant to be a resource to help Canadians navigate what can be a tricky and confusing process, but it often devolves into harsh criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government.
"What a waste of time and money," wrote one member. "Does anyone know when this stupid cash grabbing hotel quarantine ends?" added another.
Before the new measures were put into effect, Canada already had a strict return-home policy for land and air travellers. Canadians were asked to complete a 14-day quarantine at home.
For larger families, the financial requirements of the mandatory hotel stay can be prohibitive. “It’s not just a little bit. It’s exorbitant for a family our size. It’s not even reasonable," said Matthew Fox, a father of seven, who is returning home to Canada after 18 months in Israel.
The family of nine were already worried about the move home. “It’s just created a whole bunch of stress. It’s just made everything from a practical perspective that much more of a nightmare,” Mr Fox said.
For Canadians who have already gone through the hotel quarantine, the experience still doesn’t sit well.
Camila Pulido and her fiance returned to Canada from Australia on February 25. They were among the first wave of travellers forced to stay in the hotels.
They were not impressed by their experience. “The amount of contact we had with people from the moment we entered Canada to the moment we got to our house to quarantine was quadrupled by the fact that we had to do a hotel quarantine,” Ms Pulido said.
They had travelled to Australia to visit the father of Ms Pulido’s fiance, who has terminal cancer. They spent 14 days in a hotel quarantine in Sydney, an experience they said was far better organised than their much shorter stay in Canada.
“Right now, they’ve implemented a hotel quarantine for the sake of implementing a hotel quarantine. There is no science backing it up,” she said.
Ms Pulido and her fiance were able to leave the hotel after 24 hours because their PCR tests came back negative, but they still had to pay for the full three days, which cost them more than C$1,300.
The Canadian government said it is all in an attempt to “help limit the spread of Covid-19 and its variants in Canada".
But some feel the government has gone too far and maybe infringing on the rights of citizens. The Canadian Constitution Foundation has launched a legal challenge to the rule.
“Our view is that these rules are redundant insofar as it’s already required to have a negative Covid test before arriving in Canada, upon arriving in Canada to do a 14-day quarantine, to take a home Covid test on day 10,” said Joanna Baron, executive director of the foundation.
"The government has not shown any evidence why it’s justified for the objective of reducing the spread of the virus. The cost and intrusiveness of the measure is such that it is actually prohibitive upon Canadians' ability to exercise their right."
Many believe the move was an attempt to deter Canadians from travelling abroad, particularly a group of people known as “snowbirds”, retired Canadians who spend the winter months in Florida and other warm states in the US.
"It's clearly, in our opinion, a punitive measure and it is cruel and has really cruel and extreme effects on Canadians, many of whom have cross-border families, have parents abroad and who have non-frivolous reasons to travel," Ms Baron said.
For the Robaks and Hudsons, it means extremely long, confusing and expensive trips home. “The travel day without the hotel is daunting, with kids and cats, but adding that stopover definitely makes it a lot harder,” Ms Robak said.
