Don’t let the door smack you on the rear end on the way out.
That pretty much sums up Doug Johnson’s reaction to eight surfers from Quebec who left the house they were renting in Martinique Wednesday after locals complained they were defying Nova Scotia’s quarantine laws by surfing at the public beach after arriving here last week. Johnson, 74, who has Stage 3 melanoma and had the lymph nodes in his left armpit removed last week, was worried the visitors could spark a COVID-19 outbreak in his beachside home.
“If one of them had caught something – and who knows, they still don’t know if one of them is sick or not, they really don’t know – and gone to our little village and went to different places, we would have been a hotbed for Nova Scotia, just like that,” Johnson said Wednesday.
The visiting surfers reportedly said they got coronavirus tests before coming to Nova Scotia last Friday.
“That means nothing because the tests were done a week ago,” Johnson said.
Provincial health officials announced Tuesday that surfing on a public beach is prohibited during the 14 days of isolation required of anyone entering Nova Scotia from outside the Atlantic bubble.
Johnson was chatting with a local Mountie Wednesday morning as they watched the group of surfers pack up and leave from 2429 East Petpeswick Rd.
“They are now gone,” Johnson said. “Good riddance.”
He represents people who bought 48 lots from his company, Martinique by the Sea Properties, a development aimed at bird watchers.
“This is just not right,” Johnson said of the visitors who didn’t isolate. “They’re breaking the law and they’re getting away with it.”
Mounties visited the surfers Sunday after locals complained the men from Quebec weren’t isolating. Police returned several times to keep tabs on them. But they didn’t ticket them for breaking Nova Scotia’s quarantine rules, said RCMP Cpl. Lisa Croteau.
“The investigation did not support the charges,” Croteau said.
The Quebec visitors refused to talk to The Chronicle Herald Tuesday. But on Wednesday they spoke with Richard Bell, editor of the Eastern Shore Cooperator, a monthly newspaper and website.
“They haven’t had a good time, let’s put it that way,” Bell said.
They told him they had all tested negative for COVID-19.
“They had gotten the results back the day before they left,” Bell said.
He now has doubts about the short-term rental market and how authorities keep tabs on visitors who are supposed to be isolating.
“This has made me feel like the whole architecture of this process is much shakier than I would like,” Bell said.
One of the problems with new legislation that came in this spring to govern short-term rentals is a loophole that means people who rent out their primary abode to visitors don’t have to register it with the province, said Darlene Grant Fiander of the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia.
“So you have a lot of people who own these homes that are not required to meet the same criteria as a licensed operator,” she said.
“In theory, a principle residence, you can only have one. But what we do know is happening is a lot of people have second homes and a lot of people are still not registering them with Access Nova Scotia.”
If everybody offering short-term rentals had to do that, it could help track down guests if there was a coronavirus outbreak, Grant Fiander said.
Registered short-term renters have to follow strict health guidelines, she said. “You’re always going to get things happening and people not abiding by rules no matter what you do, but I think you do the best you can to have a framework in place that protects us from this stuff.”
Conservative Leader Tim Houston said lots of people from outside the Atlantic bubble use short-term rentals to quarantine before re-uniting with their families in Nova Scotia.
“This is a case of the rules are there; the rules need to be followed,” Houston said of the recent problem at Martinique Beach with surfers who failed to isolate.
“The rules should be communicated to those people entering the province.”
He bristled at the suggestion of handing fines to short-term rental operators if their guests don’t abide by the quarantine regulations.
“The onus is on the people ... visiting the province to follow the rules,” Houston said. “I can’t see putting that onus on to somebody else.”
It would be “very dangerous for our society” to start holding people accountable for the actions of their guests in a short-term rental, he said. “I would not be anywhere close to advocating for that or supporting that.”
