Canada's main immigration website appeared to crash and suffer repeated outages over the course of election night in the US.
Twitter users were quick to pick up on the outage, claiming it was caused by the high number of Americans visiting the page as it became more likely that Donald Trump was going to win.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While "there's no guarantee the two things are related", says CNN, "given the loud insistence of many Americans, every election cycle, to move north in the event of an unfavorable election outcome, it's not a huge leap to assume that many despondent voters are exploring options".
Data from Google Trends also suggested searches for "move to Canada" spiked significantly during the night as Trump victories unfolded in key battle states such as Florida and Ohio, reports The Guardian.
The trends seemed to mimic events following the UK's EU referendum, when multiple searches were made by people in the UK looking to gain Irish citizenship following the country's vote to leave.
While there has been no official word on the outage from the Canadian government, its global affairs department posted a tweet just as it became clear that Trump was about to win:
-
What will security guarantees for Ukraine look like?Today's Big Question From boots on the ground to economic sanctions, here are the measures that might stop Russia taking another bite out of Ukraine
-
Will Ukraine trade territory for peace?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION Kyiv’s defences are wearing thin but a land swap is constitutionally impossible and crosses Zelenskyy's red lines
-
Russia tries Ukraine land grab before Trump summitSpeed Read The incursion may be part of Putin's efforts to boost his bargaining position
-
Europe counters Putin ahead of Trump summitSpeed Read President Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska this week for Ukraine peace talks
-
Is Trump's new peacemaking model working in DR Congo?Talking Point Truce brokered by the US president in June is holding, but foundations of a long-term peace have let to be laid
-
Who wins from a Trump-Putin meeting?Today's Big Question Trump might get the leaders together for a photo op but brokering a peace deal won’t be easy
-
How China uses 'dark fleets' to circumvent trade sanctionsThe Explainer The fleets are used to smuggle goods like oil and fish
-
US and EU reach trade dealSpeed Read Trump's meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen resulted in a tariff agreement that will avert a transatlantic trade war
