Right now it's about 10%. We'll be looking at 20%. Again, that will depend on what is happening through the course of the campaign.
An alternative to that, if we are truly short of staff, is that we can merge polls. This requires less staff, but it has some impact on electors. They may have to wait longer.
If there is such a breakout, you would expect that if we're missing 30% of our staff because of H1N1, I would think that electors would be showing up in lesser numbers because they would be affected by the same circumstances. Our staff comes from the community.
In terms of sites, we always have backup sites. I shouldn't say always; in 99% of cases we have backup sites. The issue with H1N1 is that maybe we should increase the number of alternatives.
As I mentioned earlier, given some of the concerns about the use of seniors homes, we should avoid having the general population attending those locations. We'll look at that, but that may require affected electors to travel farther to get to a proper location. Close to 70% of our sites are schools, community centres, municipal halls, churches or other places of worship. We're working as we speak with the providers of those sites to understand what their approach would be if there was a breakout. We're looking at alternative options. For example, what would our option be if a school board were to close all the schools in a riding? I can't say it wouldn't have an effect. It would. We might have alternative sites, but it would impact on electors.
That being said, I think we have to be careful to monitor what the health authorities are advising. So far there is no indication an election represents any greater risk than any public or social activities the population runs on any given day. There's no indication at this time that there would be a massive close-out of sites.