On the day of the US Presidential election results Canada’s Immigration website crashed. This caused many to speculate whether it was because of a wave of Americans were hoping to escape a world in which Donald Trump was president.
Well Canada has come forward and officially confirmed to CBC that yes, a huge number of the people trying to access the website were from America.
To put that into perspective compared to the normal traffic Canada’s immigration website might expect here’s some context:
As Americans started to realise that Trump would indeed become the next President of the United States, the site saw a 12x increase in the amount of traffic from the US.
Google Trend results from the election night itself reinforced this showing a huge spike in the amount of people looking to move.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already said he would welcome Americans fleeing Trump.
“Cape Breton is lovely, all times of the year,” he said with a smile, referring to a viral website that has encouraged Americans to seek refuge on the small island off Canada’s Atlantic coast should Trump win.
This is hardly a positive start for the 45 president especially after he tried to make everyone forget his rhetoric for the past 18 months with a conciliatory speech that promised unity.
He said it was “time for us to come together as one united people”, and promised to reach out to opponents for “your guidance and help”.
Interestingly, Canada wasn’t the only country considered to be a safe haven from Trump’s new vision of America.
Google Trends also noticed a considerable spike in the number of people looking to move to Ireland too.