Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump both scored big wins on Super Tuesday but the real winner may have been Canada’s immigration department.
According to Google data, searches for “Move to Canada” reached their highest ever level on Tuesday with a 350 per cent increase observed between 8 p.m. and midnight.
The last time Google saw a similar spike was when George W. Bush was re-elected as President of the United States in November, 2004.
Back then Reuters reported that traffic to the website of Citizenship and Immigration Canada saw a six-fold increase the day after the election.
The spike in search activity on Super Tuesday resulted in considerable chatter on social media with thousands of tweets under the #MovetoCanada hashtag.
At one point, Coun. Norm Kelly even got involved, tweeting out a link to Canada’s immigration website that was subsequently retweeted more than 41,000 times.
“Part of it was intentionally humorous but there are people who sound really concerned and Canada is a welcoming country, so I thought it would be important for me to showcase that character of our country,” Kelly told CP24 on Wednesday, noting that the response to his tweet caught him by surprise.
There was some speculation that the increased activity led to glitches on the website of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, however on Wednesday a spokesperson for the department told CP24 that any issues were the result of “an internal technical issue” that has been ongoing for several weeks.
