Editor’s update, Nov. 10: Yes it did.
As Donald Trump’s becoming president-elect seemed increasingly more likely as votes were counted on Tuesday night, Immigration Canada’s website was suffering technical problems.
A running joke for progressives throughout the long and sometimes dark election campaign was to threaten to move to Canada if Trump won. Facing the reality of that prospect, it might be possible that sudden overwhelming interest caused the site to crash.
Many visitors to the site saw this error message:
Social media posts indicate problems with the website were reported starting around 10:30 PM ET. As of 1:18 AM ET Nov. 9, the site appears to be back online.
On the day after the election, CTV News received a confirmation that the site did go down due to an influx of traffic.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Lisa Filipps confirmed that the website, “became temporarily inaccessible to users as a result of a significant increase in the volume of traffic.”
Shared Services Canada “worked through the night and continues to work to resolve the issue to ensure that the website is available to users as soon as possible,” Filipps added.