I will answer that first.
New Brunswick generally has quite a robust campus voting program. I believe that in 2018 we were on 18 university and community college campuses, which for a small province is quite significant. We did not have any on-campus voting during this last election. That was in large part due to the fact that it was an unscheduled election more so than to the pandemic. However, the pandemic did come into play because we really were uncertain as to how many students would even be on campus, and that varies quite significantly from university to university here even in New Brunswick.
That was a concern that the student groups expressed—our not having that presence—but in all cases there were polling locations very close to the universities, so I don't know, ultimately, that they had as large a problem accessing.
A bigger issue would have been for those individuals, whether seniors or those with underlying health conditions, who were concerned about going out to the polls to vote, whether to advance polls or even to a returning office, and so were accessing mail-in ballots. It's the issue that those who are most vulnerable, be they seniors or those with disabilities, may not have the technology at home, particularly around the type of mail-in application processes that we have in New Brunswick. If you don't have a printer, it becomes very difficult. You need to sign your application even if you can email it.
Then it's getting those ballots to people. We were doing everything we could to facilitate that delivery because we knew there was a short turnaround time, so we were allowing friends and family to pick up and deliver ballots for folks. If they didn't have that, we had returning officers and their staff going out and hand delivering ballots, and then going back and picking them up. I would say that the field staff went above and beyond to try to ensure that everyone was able to vote.
Another challenge, of course, was individuals in long-term care facilities. We facilitated and tried to make the mail-in ballot process as easy as possible for those individuals, but it was a challenge. It relied on the staff of long-term care facilities to assist the residents, and as you all know, during this pandemic they are quite overworked as it is. In some cases, there was a lack of understanding of what needed to be signed. We have a certificate envelope in New Brunswick with the ballot inside that needs to come back, and they weren't signed and that sort of thing, so there were individuals who exercised their right to vote, but by the time the ballots got back, the procedures hadn't been followed correctly. That's one of those things that we want to look at—how we can simplify the process—for our elections in May because we do anticipate that those will be held during the same situation.