Procedure and House Affairs committee  To Dr. Shahab's point, we had advance polls and we also had mail-in options, so that definitely gave a lot of flexibility for people who wouldn't necessarily be able to vote on election day. The only complaint I heard was, I think, about a wheelchair accessibility issue in one of the polling stations.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In terms of the possibility of not holding an election, in New Brunswick, all our discussions focused solely on providing advice and recommendations on how to conduct as safe an election as possible. There was no discussion about not holding an election.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Who are you asking?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think there was anything specific. Again, it would be the same type of guidance that would exist for any operating business or establishment. With respect to changing response phases because of an outbreak, the most recent outbreaks affected only one zone at a time. We did happen to have two separate outbreaks concurrently in two different zones, but the orange phase of response meant that certain businesses could not operate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, our public health advice depends on what phase we are in, and we keep revising that. The original red phase of lockdown is very different from our new version of that, because as we get new information and new data and the risks change globally and in other jurisdictions in Canada, we continuously take that new evidence-based information and data to inform what our different phases will look like.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Who wants to go first?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We didn't make a distinction between door-to-door in an adult residential facility and a long-term care facility, etc. Each facility has protocols that reflect which phase of the response we're in. At that time, the province was in the yellow phase, which means that they all have a certain type of visitation that is allowed, and it's limited to one family member, usually.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't have any official relationship with the chief electoral officer. Again, we provided input from a public health perspective around how to safely have an election. It was very, very basic advice, from the perspective of all the engagement sessions we had early on in the pandemic when we were going through our phases around what businesses or other establishments could do in different sectors of industry.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  During the first wave of the pandemic, when it was clear that during the red phase of our response many things would not be able to take place.... I remember the very first conversation around what things could happen and what things could not happen in the red phase, well before any lockdown happened.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There were no cases as a result of the election. Obviously, again, we're in a fortunate situation that we have not had very many outbreaks in total during the entire pandemic. The cases that we had over the summer months and into September were, for the most part, travel-related cases, and they were self-isolating and did not transmit to anybody else.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good afternoon. Here in New Brunswick, the provincial election was held on September 7, and the writ dropped on August 17, so that was a 28-day election period. Our role at Public Health New Brunswick was not to endorse whether an election should proceed; rather, we reviewed the operational plan that was put forward by Elections New Brunswick and provided feedback to ensure agreement with public health guidance.