Just received this message from Haras in Ottawa, Canada, regarding the Canadian election observers:

In Canada there is an agency called Canadem that organizes international election observer missions for Canada among other things. They are now accepting applications for the mission to Ukraine this month. The response has been so overwhelming that they had problems with their email server - mail boxes kept filling up so they had to keep creating new email addresses to accept all the messages. Two days ago they announced that there were 600 applications, then 1000 by the end of the day, and finally 1500 applications as of yesterday. By now there is probably many more. They have posted the following message:

Response from the Canadian public to this mission has been wonderful; over 1500 Canadians have offered their volunteer assistance! Given this high level of interest, new applicants must demonstrate that they have either Ukrainian or elections experience.

The government of Canada is expected to send 500 observers. The link is: http://canadem.ca/elections/ukraine/

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress is also organizing volunteers – see: http://ucc.ca/election_observer_project/