I also read that article and felt this was so poor Journalistic reporting...These are two separate things - the article was a little vague about people just 'showing up at the border and saying they don't have money for hotel stay.' That's where I think the question comes up of how they boarded in the first place.
As for government setting regs to not let travellers board they can do this. It's not a charter violation. They're not preventing you from entering Canada - you just have to pay money. Same as you would have to pay for an air ticket.
They mention in passing that people just need to say they don't have the money but at no point provide support for that claim, the person they interviewed and talked about was in a completely different situation, and never said she couldn't pay, she could not go to the hotel she booked through no fault of hers, and after dropping that kind of bombshell early on and in the title of their article never talk about it again really.
It is clickbait and garbage journalism in my opinion.
Nothing about the actual process to board a plane if you want to claim you can't afford to pay for the hotel quarantine, nothing about the fact that people need to provide all their information in those hotels and that it would seem fairly easy for the government to come after people who claim it while having plenty of funds to pay for it themselves, nobody who actually successfully did it in their article, and the whole article is hearsay from that lady in a situation completely different from what the article claims...