Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be back at the committee.
Mr. Perrault, I appreciate your taking the time to speak to the committee today.
I represent the riding of Kenora, which of course as you know had a number of issues throughout the course of the election. Before I get to my questions, I want to put a bit of context on the record from my experience, particularly in the far north in the first nations communities that you mentioned earlier on.
The returning officer in our riding actually reached out to all of our campaigns. It was clear to every single campaign that the election day in some of the communities was essentially going to be moved. In Pikangikum specifically this was the case. It was to accommodate a traditional harvesting day that coincided with the election. That was clearly communicated to the campaigns—I can tell you that.
I was quite shocked to see in the days after the election that the community itself was not aware of that. I had a call from the chief of Pikangikum, who told me that there was never any communication to him that that was going to be the case.
In another instance, in Northwest Angle, prior to election day the chief reached out to me to ask where her polling station was. When I went to the Elections Canada website I found out that she was actually listed as the contact for the polling location. Again, there was clearly a breakdown of communication, to put it mildly.
It wasn't just in the first nations, actually. There were many other concerns as well.
Red Lake is another example, where the advance polling station that was advertised online and communicated to the campaigns was actually not where the polling station was. I just found that out because I happened to be driving by. I stopped by because there were no cars in the parking lot, and it looked like there was no one there, and there wasn't. The polling station was not at that location.
In trying to spread some news about that, I shared the information on Facebook and was actually flagged for spreading misinformation, which of course was untrue, by Elections Canada. It was actually Elections Canada that was incorrect.
I know there was a lot to take in there. There were clearly some widespread systemic, structural issues that go far beyond just one or two communities.
My questions to you are through the chair. How do we explain that? Is it a function of the snap election, a pandemic election, of a shorter writ period? How can that happen in a general election in Canada?