Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to address the committee today. As you know, my name is Anton Boegman. I am B.C.'s chief electoral officer, a position that I have held since 2018. Prior to this appointment, I was Elections BC's deputy chief electoral officer

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You are correct.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't have the exact date it was held, historically. I know that the past four elections were always held on a Tuesday in May.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was more beneficial from a number of perspectives. One was in terms of access to election workers, especially in a pandemic, when many older workers who typically are the election workers are in an at-risk category. It allowed us to recruit younger workers and workers who were

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Premier Horgan did not consult with me before calling the snap election.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  British Columbia, like the federal situation, was in a minority government situation. My mandate requires that we be ready. We started working immediately at the onset of the pandemic on our plans to administer an election during a pandemic. Following the political signs in Briti

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. It's my understanding that there were no issues in relation to the campaigning side of things.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, we did. We had a press conference the day after the call of the election. It focused heavily on safe voting and the processes in place. Our advertising campaigns were reworked during the early stages of the pandemic to emphasize safe voting and the alternative voting options

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We did anticipate it. As I mentioned, we did surveys over the summer that indicated on a consistent basis that approximately 35% of British Columbians would choose to vote by mail in a pandemic. That informed our planning and our reorienting of our systems and infrastructure arou

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was challenging, but that was identified early as a long lead time item, so it was our focus at the end of July and throughout August to make sure that we could access supplies. We also tapped into the province's portal for some of the supplies.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't have statistics on our workforce composition, but I could get that if necessary. Anecdotally, I've heard that the workforce was younger than it was previously.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have three that I'm aware of that we passed.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't have the reports in front of me, but they—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I could, yes.