Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have to agree with Dr. Shahab again. Our goal with public health is really to be able to mitigate all the risks for any type of situation. Obviously, following all the public health guidance in this situation is imperative, regardless of whether it's pre-election or during the election itself.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I believe all that information was captured. That is similar to restaurants, etc. and any gatherings. It's very wise to have that information available. Certainly, with more technology and the COVID app.... That's another piece of technology that can be useful in this situation.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I echo what Dr. Shahab says. That is very true. The only other thing.... This is an evolving situation. We do keep learning new things and we do keep having newer technologies available to us. We've recently started to do testing for essential workers every several days. If we were looking to add anything to consider, we could perhaps add testing the next time we have an election, depending on how things have evolved with that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure. Again, I know that I had public health employees who worked on the official advice and would have interacted with the ElectionsNB employees.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure who would have done inspections. We would have had public health inspectors who could have helped with that, but also WorkSafeNB inspectors could have helped in the situations where there seemed to be complaints or what have you, which people did go to inspect. With respect to the plan, we reviewed the plan that was presented and helped make suggestions for improving it and changing it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, there's the one I mentioned about the lack of wheelchair accessibility for one of the voting sites.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with Dr. Shahab.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To really minimize the risks, people can vote by mail. This would be the safest way to vote. As Dr. Shahab said, the other very safe way to vote would be to ensure more designated advance polling locations. This would decrease the number of people voting on election day.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think it's public health, because, again, our advice is on how to make it safe. In terms of the voter confidence in how safe it is, obviously the mail-in ballot is a very safe way to vote. Again, we can only give our advice about how to make it as safe as possible, no matter what the setting is in terms of outbreaks and cases.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I exchanged information in writing with the elections officials, but I know that we had people from public health working with Elections New Brunswick folks. As for the only conversation I had, the premier phoned me at one point and he let the public know that he had spoken to Dr.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't have any information on this. I don't know whether we recommended that people be younger or less at risk. I think that people made their own choice about whether to participate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would say so. However, I think that we also want to encourage people to use the vote—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, to Dr. Shahab's point, we did not say that door-to-door canvassing was not allowed. We were in the yellow phase at that time and we just gave guidance on how to do it safely.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I went through the Public Health Act to see what powers we have under the act to use our judgment around what things are safe and what are not, in different situations. My understanding is that we would not really be stepping in to interfere with the democratic process.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  For indigenous populations, there was nothing that would have prevented anybody here from voting in that way, although there was a recent election on the Quebec side of our border. We did actually give exemptions for the New Brunswickers who needed to go across to vote to do so.