What I would recommend is looking at other regions, and I understand the committee is doing this for case studies. I spoke with Elections BC in preparing for this meeting, and they noted that stakeholder outreach in preparing for the huge volume of mail-in ballots was a critical part of their pandemic election strategy. Fortunately, there are some case studies to draw key lessons from.
In terms of operationalizing this highly coordinated approach with community groups and non-profits, I mentioned Apathy is Boring and the Democratic Engagement Exchange as bridge organizations. At DemocracyXChange, we are a coalition of different groups, academic, non-profit and community groups, including the Toronto Public Library, which is part of our group as well. We are all well positioned to help connect with these bridge organizations and then also to help to raise or amplify the connection that is available through groups like libraries and community organizations in particular.
I just want to note that at DemocracyXChange, we held our third annual summit in October. Normally we meet in person, but just like everybody else, we had to shift to an all-virtual undertaking this year during the pandemic. We had over 700 people participate in our three-day, virtual summit, and I don't think we could have imagined anybody doing that a year ago or eight months ago, so I understand your point about that coordination and connection piece being a really critical one and needing to operationalize that.
I just want to highlight the interest and appetite for that democratic engagement and also to highlight that, among those 700 participants, we had people who simply identified as citizens, so it wasn't necessarily people who do democracy for a living, but that we were open to the general public.
Among our registrants we also had academics, community organizers, students and members of the corporate, government and non-profit sectors. It's across those arenas that this outreach function needs to be mobilized. I mentioned the point that outreach officers are also available, but these non-profit groups and community groups such as The Canadian Muslim Vote, for instance, have mobilized during the pandemic to support their communities in different ways. That infrastructure is already in place to disseminate messages about how to effectively participate in a pandemic election. Again, we'll note that we're happy to assist with that stakeholder planning piece too.