Derek Kilbourn

Sounder News

On June 18, at the Gabriola Fire Hall, Gabriola ratepayers will have an opportunity between Noon and 7pm to vote in three trustees for the Gabriola Fire Protection Improvement District Board. There are six candidates running for the three positions. They are: Chris Bowers, Oliver Bussler, David Chorneyko, Paul Giffin, Rick Jackson, and Wayne Mercier.

Gabriola Talks, an independent non-partisan organization on Gabriola Island, hosted an All-Candidates Meeting on June 4 at the Agi Hall with an open invitation for all the candidates to attend. Members of the public who wished to ask a question placed their names in a ballot box, and if selected, were able to ask their question. The following is a Sounder transcription of the Questions and Answers from that evening.

Question, from Glenys Bussler: In 2022 the GFPID governance review made dozens of recommendations to improve transparency and accountability, including limiting trustees to two consecutive terms of three years. I [Glenys Bussler] served on that committee, and I can say that very few recommendations have been implemented yet. The chair [Paul Giffin], now seeking a third term, recently told the Sounder that all the recommendations have been dealt with. That is simply not true. The same trustee [Giffin] was also the subject of a non-confidence vote by the Gabriola Firefighters Association, which I was a member of at the time. As elected officials, what will each of you do to ensure the recommendations are followed, and how will you keep the public informed of your progress?

Candidate Wayne Mercier

Mercier: I believe you’d be correct that few of those recommendations have been implemented. The ones that seem most important to me are the ones who refer to a clear delineation of responsibility between the board the corporate officer and the fire chief, and the clear adoption of policy to deal with a number of human resources and administrative concerns. I think there are good models for such policies. I’m particularly fond of the human rights and communications policies adopted by the Deep Bay Improvement District, which are very comprehensive and were arrived at through work with the Office of the Ombudsperson. I would advocate vociferously, even combatively, that the trustees work with the Office of the Ombudsperson proactively to adopt best practices policies which reflect the recommendations in the governance report and also those in the Brownlee report, which focus on the administration, particularly the role of the probate.

Candidate Paul Giffin

Giffin: The governance report was issued July 22 2022 and that report dealt with the trustees themselves, and it was done by members of the community on Gabriola Island. The bulk of the recommendations have been met. The comment with respect to two terms was dealt with by the board when the report was received, and the board decided at that time not to accept the two year term limit. So that recommendation was voted down. With respect to the Brownlee report that was just mentioned, that was done in February 2023, and it dealt with the review of the fire department. And as a result of that review, there was also an impact on what the trustees were doing. That report recommended had 52 recommendations in it. Of those 52 recommendations, 25 have been adopted. 18 of those recommendations have not been adopted, and he probable reason for that is the provincial government and some legislative issues that have been going on for the last four years that hopefully we’re told will be dealt with in the next six to eight months. Once the province deals with those issues, then we can deal with the recommendations.

Candidate Oliver Bussler

Bussler: I think the question actually dealt with one of the reports, the governance report, but in terms of keeping track of the of the deliverables in that report. I think that is important to speak to transparency. So if we, for example, the public, wanted access to that report right now, you can’t actually find it on the trustee website or on the Gabriola Fire Department website. I looked at it before this meeting, and I found it on Wayne’s website, which is kind of weird. But in terms of tracking the progress against it, what I would suggest is, again, make it more transparent. These are the deliverables. What Paul is saying right now, the fact that there’s a vote around trustee term limits, this is the first I’ve heard of that. But if that vote did take place, let’s document it somewhere, let’s make that available publicly. A good place to document some of these things would be with a long range plan, for example. For your public documents, if you have clear deliverables, then put those deliverables in there. and show how you’re tracking against those deliverables.

Candidate Rick Jackson

Jackson: Basically, in my opinion, two terms is not really productive or realistic. Some of the best outcomes we’ve had have have been trustees that have been like three, four terms. I think it should be up to the public if they’re happy with the input or the work that trustees do when they get reelected for the next term. I really think it should be up to the public to make that decision, rather than an arbitrary two term limit. Basically, it takes two terms to really get a sense of what’s going on in overall picture, in my opinion, and I think past trustees would probably agree with that. There’s also a subsection in that one report saying that trustees should be judged by a panel of the public annually. I think it should be the public that judges them when it’s election time, if they’ve been effective or not. People who really don’t know what’s going on, sitting on a board on a sub panel, that seems counterproductive to me.

Candidate David Chorneyko

Chorneyko: So one of the things that governance review talked about was working on the website. The website has been an ongoing issue for years now. I think to be able to put together a good website with all the documents from the organization, from the Improvement District is just demonstrating basic competence,. This needs to finally get resolved. Right now I think that there’s probably five websites regarding this fire department. Wayne has one. I have one. There’s the [GFPID] Chronicles. The Improvement District had a website. And the Fire Department has a website. I think there’s like five websites regarding this fire department. I think we have a record for number of our number of websites per Fire Department. So that needs to be resolved. How do we ensure progress? Just by getting it publicly available on the website. Another thing that needs to happen in that from that governance review is the – Wayne had mentioned – the ombudsperson has the best practices for open meetings. I think that that needs to be adopted. The leak recently, a month or so ago about the closed meeting and the subjects that were in it? People have known for a long time that the board has buried a lot of stuff in closed meetings, and that just proved it to a lot of people. Stuff that should be an open meeting ends up in closed meetings. How do we show progress? I think we adopt the Ombudsperson’s best practices and then just purposefully work towards that.

Candidate Chris Bowers

Bowers: I was really interested in this review when it first came out, so I tried to attend it, and was told that it was decided it was going to be private, which I found out a few months later, is not actually allowed in a committee of a board, so I was disappointed in that. When I took a look at and it just recently, it looked like some of the recommendations were pretty good. I understood from talking to a couple of trustees that some of the recommendations had already been achieved. One of the ones that I found interesting was training for trustees, new trustees, which I would be really interested in as a new trustee. In terms of tracking. I like the idea of having work on the website. I know that people have been trying to do work on the website. It’s one of those things where, if there’s lots of time and or money, those things can be done. And my sense is that the time or the money has been absorbed by all sorts of other things that maybe are not as helpful. Hopefully that will start to ease off in time, and people can get down to work again.

Question 2

Question, asked by current Fire trustee Erik Johnson: This is for Dave. In the interest of transparency, could you tell us about your intimidation of John Mueller in a text in the last couple of weeks that you sent to him. You want to explain that to the voters?

Chorneyko: Yeah. I was talking to John, and I told him he should probably step down. I think all of the trustees should actually step down after the after the lawsuit and after the union, after there was a union brought in, I think all the trustees should step down.

Chorneyko read directly from the text thread in his phone reading, “I understand the election is coming up soon. As you know I plan on running. I just wanted to touch base with you on the dam deal thing. It’s my opinion that you had a fairly glaring conflict of interest on that one. It is what it is and I don’t think anything illegal happened – just terrible optics. I won’t keep stuff like that buried because it makes me complicit. It is not on my agenda to expose this, but it certainly is on Wayne’s. If it comes up, which should be a reasonable expectation, I’ll put it on the table and talk about it in public. Be prepared for this. I don’t want this to create conflict between you and me. Be prepared to wear that conflict in public. An effective way to diffuse this, is to step down from trustee now. Take your victory lap an call it a day. Then if this comes up, it’ll be, yeah, maybe an ex-trustee had a conflict of interest.”

Jackson: That was still that was something that started from the dam, and the hydrant was something that I started. We put that hybrid in across from the ferry line up. And at that time, the property all belonged to Mike Peacock, and we had a handshake deal on installing that. Years later, about the time I was getting ready to retire, Bob Rooks brought all that property. At some point, John Moller bought the property off Mike Peacock and that already had a water line installed to it from the dam. Rooks wanted the fire departments to take 100% of the water supply from that dam. And we weren’t interested in that expense. I believe it said we settled for somewhere around 10% and I believe John, because he already had a water line coming from that hydrant onto that property, I think he settled for a percent. And Rooks’ subdivision retained the rest of it. So I don’t really see that as being an issue. There were certain documents that were released to the public on his [Wayne’s] website, for instance, of a cheque for the amount of money that was paid out for the fire department’s percentage of renovating that dam. I don’t see John as having a conflict of interest.

Bussler: I really don’t have much to say on that matter either, other than the text didn’t sound very intimidating, but that’s just my opinion.

Mercier: I have talked about the dam in public a number of times. At this time, the same issue, the law requires an Improvement District when making contracts about land or works to formalize such contracts through the enactment of bylaw. That’s the statute. There is a joint works agreement that exists between complex properties the Improvement District, and Mr. John Mueller and his spouse as downstream landowners of property there. That is a joint works agreement. It’s very clearly a contract having to do with land or works. There are also one, possibly two, right-of-way agreements that have been enacted – those also require formalization through the process of a bylaw. The lack of a bylaw, formalizing those contracts, on its face, exposes the community to large liabilities, in addition to the fact that the existing agreement places the responsibility for maintaining this critical civic resource on about 20 eventual strata property owners – rather than the whole community. So they’re stuck with the responsibility to maintain it. You can look up that document. I obtained it for Freedom of Information Act. There was also a cheque written – to which Rick referred – from the Gabriola Fire Protection Improvement District to Potlatch properties. Several days later, a donation for the same amount was made to the Improvement District. That seems to me like something that should be processed formally with legal advice and public consultation. That does not appear to have been the case. In my opinion, I’m not an expert, but that exposes the community to durable, long standing, severe liabilities, because I don’t believe that those contracts would stand up if challenged, and that is something that critically needs to be addressed, in my opinion. I wasn’t intimidated by that text, and I, in the pursuit of this conflict, have been called a Nazi, an overweening jackass, a smug little twit.

Bowers: I’ll be really short. I didn’t see the email. I don’t know if John felt intimidated, and I don’t really know what happened, because I believe a lot of this happened in camera, so I don’t really know a whole lot about this, so I’m going to just leave it at that.

Giffin: This has been an ongoing issue for the last three years. The entire dam situation started long before I became a member of the board. The board took a position. The board holds the water license for part of the water behind that dam. It has been explained at the last two [GFPID] annual general meetings by the accountant, exactly what happened. It was nothing illegal done. It has been explained at two that I can think at – two that I can think of – monthly meetings. There has been nothing illegal done. The board is audited every year by an accountant to ensure that there’s hanky panky. The charitable receipts are reviewed by Revenue Canada. There was nothing done illegally or improperly. With respect to John Mueller, I can tell you that in my time on the board, he has gone out of his way to ensure there was no perceived conflict of interest. He has recused himself. He has not voted on various things. So to accuse him of conflict of interest, to me quite frankly, is rude. I’ll leave it at that.

Question 3

Penelope Bahr, former Fire trustee, asked the next question. “I’m very interested in the vote, and I find seven hours in the middle of the week, that disenfranchises too many people. It’s in the middle of a work week and it’s just one day, and if you, in fact, work in Nanaimo, if you miss the 5:20pm ferry, you can’t vote. I find this appalling. So my question is to all the candidates, will you work to provide advanced polling dates and a mail in ballot for next year’s election?”

Giffin: Penelope, you were on the board when this was initially brought up, and you were part of the group that reviewed the requirements for mail in balloting and advanced polls. One of the issues with respect to having an advanced poll is security of the ballots. We have a major issue there because we don’t have a place that meets the requirements to secure those ballots. When this was initially brought up, I’m going to go back five, six years ago. The way things were handled, the Annual General Meeting was at 7pm. People were nominated from the floor. They had their chance to give a little spiel. There was a vote held, and you had a new board. We’ve now moved forward on that, and in response to some of the concerns that were brought up, we have extended the voting hours from about 20 minutes to seven hours. One of the things that we can look at is maybe moving the voting date to a Saturday. The other thing that has to be considered is that if you have an advanced poll that will cost additional funds. The current election costs us in the order of – and don’t hold me to this number – in excess of $2,000 by the time all the payments were made. So that would be one of the concerns. The main concern right now is the security of the ballots.

Chorneyko: Yes, to advance voting, we need to do that. Security of ballots – I understand it’s an issue, but it’s got to be resolvable. It can’t be that hard to secure the ballots. If [Regional District of Nanaimo and Islands Trust] can do it, why can’t we?

Bowers: So when they asked about this, I kind of got the same information that has already been expressed. The big issue is security ballots. I think there’s a huge thing that happens through the RDN at the end, in terms of being very, very careful that there’s no possible hanky, hanky going on with what happens with the ballots. Perhaps there is a way to do that, to secure the ballots. I don’t know yet, I’d certainly be interested in exploring that. I think it would be great if people could have advance voting, because that makes it a whole lot for easier for everybody. I also understand that the time and money is an issue, and time and money has been drained out of this board frequently over the last few years. So me, again, when that, if that starts happening, other things that really should be happening can start happening.

Mercier: So candidate Giffin referred to the old times circus six years ago. Where things were done from the floor, nominations were casual, rural, informal. And then the Supreme Court overturned an election, nullified it, declared it to be of no effect, because those practices were wholly inadequate. Since that time, which was, as we just heard, five or six years ago, the Improvement District has not developed or published an Elections policy. There is no formalized sequence of events or assignment of responsibilities outlining how an election is conducted when things will happen under what circumstances they will happen, and how those responsibilities will be handled. And yet, advanced voting is a thing that’s commonly done in Improvement Districts significantly smaller than this one. Mail-in voting, I can see being difficult. I can see the implementation of that taking time and the costs perhaps being prohibitive. But I think the discussion deserves to be had in public, and I think the discussion deserves to come with numbers attached. Advanced voting is a thing that’s just commonly done. Gabriola Island’s is not outer Kyrgyzstan. This is a modern, well-connected place filled with skilled and accomplished people. Advanced voting is not a trip to Jupiter. It’s a solved problem. There are policies and practices in place for doing this. Nothing whatsoever prevents this Improvement District, which is very wealthy, from applying them to democracy here.

Bussler: Yeah, similar vein. I just received our property tax bill this past over the past week, and it’s not insignificant, the amount that we’re paying towards the fire department right now. So for me, I think what that means is that the majority of the people should have access to voting. So if it affects you financially so much, then why not make it available for all people to vote? I’ve talked to lots of people over the last couple of weeks that are going to just happen to be away during the vote, and so they have no opportunity to provide their say on something that affects them quite significantly. I could see mail in ballots being somewhat problematic, but multiple voting days seems like something that should be manageable.

Jackson: Yeah, just on the subject of the Supreme Court thing, I’d just like to take people back a few years. As Paul said, our elections used to be just real minor things. In fact, many years I had to go out and try to talk people into running for trustees. I got accused of having them as my hand picked trustees, because I was begging people to put their name in to run. So then the year came along after the Fire Hall, and we got stormed, and that created an issue. Some people said, hey, this wasn’t legal, and took it to court. Yeah, that [election] got overturned. That said, I have got no real objections to moving on and finding better ways to do stuff. I think people should have their say. And I think if it’s a situation where people aren’t being able to vote because of things like that, and they’re entitled to, I believe finding a way to make it work is probably a good thing to try.

Question 4

Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley asked the next question. “Since I came here a little over 20 years ago, I’ve observed a kind of contextual shifting of how we understand the Fire Department as the Fire Improvement District. And so if a citizen says, “I have a concern about how the trustees are governing,” what we hear back is, “you’re criticizing our firefighters. You’re not behind our firefighters.” I would like to know what the candidates would do to remedy that situation, so that as a citizen, I can be assured that the trustees are carrying out their role, and it’s an appropriate role in relation to the firefighters who deserve to be supported by a board that understands that distinction.”

Chorneyko: Yeah, that’s a good question, because I’ve seen that if you say anything about the fire department, it’s immediately deflected at an attack on the firefighters themselves. And that’s never, seldom, if ever, the intent of that type of thing, and it comes from a sense of defensiveness, and that’s the the way that the trustees are defending themselves. So it’s a cultural thing, and the culture in this organization needs to change. And so one of the things that I would do for that is there needs to be values, mission statement and things like that, in order to ground the culture in this organization. Those things [defensiveness] don’t come from a place of integrity. And so there needs to this. Yeah, fire, the fire service, is supposed to be an honorable and respected organization in the community and that stuff takes away from that. So there needs to be a culture shift in this organization. And that’s that’s the tough work that needs to happen.

Bowers: As I recall when all of this stuff happened, it happened shortly after, well after the fire department decided that they were going to have a fire hall instead of a quonset hut. Right then there was disagreement about how that was going to go down. And that was the first time I heard the word dysfunctional used about the fire department. Up until then, as an observer of how they had worked, the fire board had all worked together very well, and then one of the people disagreed with the decision that they had all originally made together to have an architect build the fire hall instead of a quonset hut. Things kind of blew up because it was expensive. After that, it settled down a little bit. From what I recall, we hired ourselves a new fire chief, and then there was another explosion, because people weren’t happy with the fire chief that got hired, or at least some people were. Then so there was all sorts of things that happened around that, and then other personnel who were accused of things and characters assasinations happening all over the place. So it seems to me that these things have progressed at this point. I think we moved on from blaming who got to be the fire chief, and now there’s things going on about how the fire board is functioning, and I think that just keeps perpetuating, just because there’s some sort of energy in the community to do that. I agree there is a difference between the fire board and the people who do the fire work.

Jackson: Through my 26 years as fire chief, I worked very hard to support the firefighters. Anybody would tell you that. Most of those years, I got along pretty well with trustees. One notable guy came in. He was going to show us how to run this goddamn fire department. And two years later, he realized there wasn’t a problem. That happened more than you think. More than anything, the firefighters are respected, and what we used in the department, it used to be standard operating procedures, that society of good stuff. Things moved on, and they realized you can’t always do things exactly that way. So we had moved to operational guidelines, and that gives you a bit of a flexibility. I think maybe perhaps a good set of operational guidelines could be laid out for the Board of trustees just to ensure that everybody’s on the same page. There is some already, you know, the complaint process and all that. It used to be, gossip, gossip, gossip, you know, and then they said, oh no, if it isn’t written down, it doesn’t exist. And so we moved on to a situation where complaints had to be written down, and that took away a lot of the silliness that was chattered around in the background. I’m off topic of this. But basically I feel that, I think that the board always could find a better way of working with firefighters. And you know, if I’m elected, I’ll do my best to work toward that.

Bussler: The trustees and the firefighters are two very distinct organizations, in my opinion, in fact it’s fact as well. So any critique I’ve leveled this evening has been towards the trustees, and I think that’s where the room for improvement exists. As trustees, we have a responsibility to the firefighters to provide them with a safe environment. I think one of the reasons that you’re seeing the firefighters recently having unionized themselves is because they may have questioned the governance that has been provided by the trustees. So I would seek to improve that relationship. I know in both the Governance review as well as the Brownles report, there were recommendations around having exit interviews, designed by the trustees, so the trustees could have more of a finger on the pulse of what’s going on. Why are there turnovers, or why are firefighters leaving? And I know that has not been implemented, but I would seek to implement that to get a better understanding of what’s going on, what’s the morale like.

Mercier: So when I started paying attention to the Improvement District, I was struck by what seems to me to be perception in the community that the Improvement District is something like a hospital auxiliary – that works to support the work of the hospital and the doctors and all the important things they do. But that’s, of course, not how it works at all. The Improvement District is local government and taxes us to pay for the fire department. They don’t run the fire department. They’re not involved in running the fire department. They hire a fire chief whose job it is to run the fire department. And all the reports are that we have a great fire department. Hooray. That has nothing to do almost with the Improvement District. The Improvement District needs policies which require the trustees to record and report their work. There is almost none of that. I have at this point access to a full year of meetings and records of the trustees. And very little work seems to be done. Certainly little work is reported. We’re told that much time is spent, but much of what is done is not written down. If that’s the case, there needs to be a clear articulation of responsibilities. If I criticize Mayor [Leonard] Krog in Nanaimo and how the money is handled, the fire department in Nanaimo does not care. Because I’m not criticizing them. I’m criticizing the City Hall. This is the same. It’s smaller, it’s much more focused. But this is not an auxiliary. This is government. You will elect us to govern. We tax you – the trustees, not me. I’m not a trustee yet – though I hope you’ll vote for me. That’s why we’re all here. I don’t care about the history of the fire hall that was like 12 years ago. Half of the island’s current population didn’t live here then. We should leave that behind. It doesn’t matter what kind of fire hall was built and how people felt about it. It’s simply not important. What’s important is that the Improvement District has taken on huge responsibilities for, an expansions of service, and contracts with outside parties, and that none of that is being done in public with the consultation, appropriate consultation, and information of the population of voters who pay for, elect, and fund the whole enterprise.

Giffin: I think we all need to be clear, there’s two separate roles, the fire department, the who you will you call for help. And the Board of trustees. The Board of trustees responsibility is the oversight of the fire department and to make sure that the fire department has what they need when they need it. I was going to say that I have not heard any complaints from the firefighters that they haven’t got what they want. But then I’ve never met a firefighter who’s happy with what they have, and they always want more. So, we, the board, do our best to supply the firefighters with the equipment that they need to do their job. So far tonight, I’ve heard comments about secret meetings, and hidden agendas. There have been no secret meetings. What’s being defined as a secret meeting – I’m going to use the example, and I’m going to speak quickly so I don’t run out of time – If the City of Nanaimo decides they want Council, decides they want to change an intersection, they pass a motion. And the motion says to staff, give us a report and bring it back to us on how we’re going to change this intersection. Staff go out, get all the information, write a report, bring it back to Council. Council then decides. That’s really great. It’s an awesome system. Problem is we don’t have any staff. So the trustees meet, try to find a way to accomplish whatever the objective is, then hold a public meeting. The public meeting is for you, for the input from the community. And once we have that, we then make the decision. A perfect example of that is the long range plan.

Question 5

Gisele Rudischer asked the next question, asking Oliver Bussler, “given that your wife [Glenys Bussler] is a named witness in a lawsuit for the plaintiffs against the Gabriola Fire District Board, the fire chief, and the Chair, I just wonder how you propose to maintain an attitude of neutrality or even camaraderie of any kind with the rest of the fire Board, who may still be here, or the fire chief?”

Bussler: I think what you’re referring to is the lawsuit that’s been filed by the former corporate officer Matt Dow for his wrongful dismissal. So I don’t know that my wife has actually been named as a witness. I know that her name is in there, as is the Fire Chief’s, as is the fire chief’s wife, Jennifer Knight. There are multiple main parties. I feel like we are grown up enough that – similar to what John has done – I would recuse myself from any decisions related to that. But I think more importantly, I want to speak to the fact that the reason that she’s named in this lawsuit is because she also experienced some bullying type behavior that took place in the fire department. And I think that’s something that obviously needs to be addressed. And ways to address it is, for example, I know that the complaints policy that the trustees have was not followed in her case. So as a trustee, I’ll ensure that these matters are brought forward again, that the trustees actually do follow their own policies. The part of the policy that they did not follow is that they are supposed to have a meeting with a complainant within a week of time of that complaint having been filed. That meeting never took place, was never offered. What the trustees decided to do instead was to hire two different consultants. So it’s not their money. So they’re hiring third party consultants to undertake a role that they should have done themselves. So in terms of how I would do things differently, I would make sure that as a trustee, we follow our own policies and we treat people fairly, and I would recuse myself fro m any conflict of interest.

Jackson: I’m not familiar with any of this so I will pass on this.

Giffin: Just to clear the air, I cannot name specific individuals involved with complaints. What I can tell you is that recently, the fire board received a complaint. The board looked at the complaint. According to policy, the board made a decision, not to investigate it, but rather refer it to the Human Resources contractor used by both the fire department and by the district. When that information was conveyed to the complainant, the complainant refused to participate with the Human Resources contract, at which point the board contracted an independent company on Vancouver Island to conduct investigations into the to the bullying and harassment complaint. The investigation was conducted. The investigator came to Gabriola, interviewed several people wrote a report. The report was received by the board, and the result of the report was that bullying and harassment did not occur. Now you can complain that the board spent money, but the primary focus of the board in this instance was to ensure that the complaint was resolved and it was resolved properly. And for those who sit here and say the board should have done this, and the board should have done that, when they know that the board cannot release the contents of the complaint, and the board cannot fully defend itself, is unfair.

Chorneyko: no comment.

Bowers: no comment.

Mercier: I have no releveance or insider knowledge on this particular matter but I would like to point out that there is a sad lack of policy in the institution around complaints as wil so many other things. So I would work to apply better policy, working again, proactively with the office of the ombudsperson, so that there is clear and consistent published and publicly available policy, to deal with all such matters which have arisen of late with concerning frequency.

Question 6

Firefighter Kyle Clifford: just a response to a comment Mr. Giffin made earlier, with regard to firefighters always asking for additional services, materials. That’s not correct. We’ve had a number of members of the fire department who have left the fire department recently, and that wasn’t the reason they left. After reading numerous articles in the Gabriola Sounder over the past few years about the Fire Protection Board, and the oft-used  “dysfunctional” description of the Board by many Gabriola residents and the fact that you, Mr. Giffin have held the key position as Board Chairman throughout the past 9 years. How can electing you to yet another term help resolve the extensive turmoil, staff law suit, staff dismissal and internal grievances?

Giffin: Thank you for the question. The board has responded to every complaint that has been received. Unfortunately, some people are not happy with their way their complaint is resolved. There’s nothing I can do about that. The board has worked very hard to ensure that the firefighters get what they want. I have not personally received, nor am I aware of any complaint received from any firefighter about me. I know that there was a resolution put forward by Mr. Clifford at a meeting with the firefighters to show lack of confidence in my leadership of the board. No substantive allegations. Nothing. As I’m sitting here now, I still have nothing. The board has gone out of their way to support the firefighters wherever we can. We obviously can’t give them the world, but we do our very best to give them what they need. They’ve had pay raises. They’ve gotten equipment that the chief has requested. I know you can’t make everybody happy all the time, but I can tell you that the board, the current board, has worked very, very hard to make sure that the firefighters get what they need when they need it.

Bussler: Two things. One, I am aware of complaints filed by two firefighters against Paul individually, so I don’t know how those didn’t come through to him. They’re [the firefighters] not in the audience today, so they can’t confirm that, but that did take place. In terms of the complaints policy, as as I mentioned, I think complaints need to be dealt with appropriately, and so just to blame the dissatisfaction of the complainants, I don’t think that’s the right approach, especially when the complaints policy was not followed. So again, to reiterate, I would ensure that we actually as trustees are held to account to follow our own policies and not to deviate from them- as Paul seemed to suggest – he has the flexibility to do, because they hired a consultant instead to fill in their responsibilities, which I don’t think they should be shirking. So I think we should be held to account and, every complaint needs to be dealt with appropriately.

Bowers: I’m not familiar with the situation, so I’m not going to comment.

Chorneyko: With the with the lawsuit that’s being filed and with the union that has been ratified, I think the entire board should step down. I think that was in one of the Sounder editions. So I mean, that’s my opinion on that. Mr. Giffin, loss of confidence doesn’t need to be proven. It needs to be taken just on the face. If the firefighters have lost confidence in you, you need to accept that.

Jackson: I don’t have an insight on any of this, but I do know what this community is like. I do know as fire chief, in a lot of cases, I have more power than the RCMP. I can walk onto your property and say, stop running your lawn mower. Put out your fire. A lot of people don’t like being told what to do, so there’s a lot of background chatter that never stopped. So I don’t know exactly what went on with Paul. But I can imagine that there’s a fair amount of that. One of the things is the change that was made is, if it isn’t written, it doesn’t exist. So if there’s a complaint about Paul, I would expect it was written. I would expect it was presented to him. I would expect that he had an opportunity to address that. And if not, then that’s pretty outrageous, and that’s pretty unfair. And hiring a consultant, I think, was probably a smart idea in that situation. Nobody wants to do that all the time, but if it’s kind of a festering situation, then going off island is probably the smartest move to do to come up with a clean resolution, and that’s about all I’ve got to say.

Mercier: I don’t know Mr. Giffin as a person. I’ve heard many things about him. I’m not a big fan of his administration as chair of the board. And I think the way that he talks about how the board has worked hard to get the firefighters what they want reflects the poor understanding of the fundamental role of the Improvement District, which is administrative and deliberative. The job to get the firefighters what they want is what we hire the fire chief for, and what the corporate officer administers the budget for. Mr. Giffin stated earlier that there’s no staff. That’s of course, incorrect. The corporate officer is the first staff person hired by the Improvement District, the necessary person hired by the Improvement District, to administer the taxes that make the fire department possible. There’s a chief, a deputy chief and a proposed assistant chief. The proposed is proposed because of the administrative burden on those staff people. And so the justification is that must be spread around because there is so much administrative work to be done by the staff. You see, the Improvement District is actually the largest employer on the island with a staff of what is it going to be like? 45 now, 43, 44? Because all of the firefighters are, of course, employees of the Improvement District. They have received wages from the Improvement District, which, until earlier this year, were sub minimum wage and had been so since 2014. They are employed by this the Improvement District in every respect, they receive T4s from them, and the Improvement District is responsible towards them in every respect as employees. So there’s actually a large staff contingent which the Improvement District oversees. So to wash your hands of all the responsibilities of administration, because we have no staff, we’re a volunteer board, is at best, disingenuous.

Question 7

Bob Andrew asked the next question asking, “the past 20, 30 years or so, it seems to me that there is a systems dysfunction. I’ve heard a lot of talk this evening about the exact ways in which the process is supposed to work, but I’ve heard nothing about some other form of coming to agreement, and that is through mediation. I have heard none of that except from Chris when she opened her comments, she alluded to that, and I’m really hoping that the board is open to trying to find a way of mediating their dysfunctional board.

Bowers: Well, yeah, it’s always good to have a professional. The first step, really, as a former couples counselor, is to have two people who are or more who are willing to actually do the work. And so that, I think that’s the first question is, who really is willing to kind of listen to each other, and how do we set that situation up in a way that will work for everyone? I have some ideas about that, and it would certainly be an interesting discussion to have if we were just going to talk, about how are we going to talk. That would take a fair amount of people being willing to take a chance and trust each other, and so that might be a big step. Personally, what I would like to do is be on the board and see how things go and as things unfold, just try to be helpful. Help people work through what’s happening in the room, as well as the discussion.

Chorneyko: You know, a lot of the consternation around this place is around transparency and secrecy. This place needs to be opened up and so that that would resolve some of it anyways. And just conversation. People need to be talking. The defensiveness I find is off the charts around this place. And so the defensiveness we need to work at coming up with solutions with that. And so those are kind of the two things that I could see helping out quite a bit. Although I understand your question was bigger than that, and there needs to be more, but I don’t have anything for you right now.

Jackson: part of the reason I decided I’d run is I feel, you know, my years of familiarity, I could help mediate the board.  Historic knowledge often is can help explain how things got to where they’re at. And that often is a step of being able to, you know, not let things get worse. Another clarification that I think was mentioned, the corporate officer does not run the department. The corporate officer does the bidding of the collective will of the trustees, and they follow the trustees orders. And I believe some of the issues we’re faced with these days are possibly a misunderstanding of that person in the role.

Mercier: Mr. Jackson is, of course, completely correct. The corporate officer does not run the fire department. They don’t run the board of trustees. They carry out the will of the board in just the same way the fire chief carries out the will of board. That’s the rule of the board. The corporate officer has exactly the same relationship with money, as the fire chief has with fire. If it’s on fire, it’s the job of the fire chief. If it concerns money, it’s the job of the corporate officer. Very simple. It’s set up in a number of documents with which I’m sure you’re familiar. In terms of acrimony, I have no personal beef whatsoever with anybody on the board or anybody representing me. Even as recently as a couple of months ago, I had a number of very congenial exchanges with Mr. Giffin during his chairing of the board. I managed to clear up a number of points of contention, and we seem to all be having a good time. I’m not a fan of his policy decisions, not a fan of the policy decisions of the board in general, but I have no personal beef with them whatsoever. I have nothing to gain from this. And so what I think is necessary is not mediation, but professional conduct. And I think it’s interesting that in May 2023, we had, after the last very contentious and acrimonious meeting and election and stuff that took place in this space – there were at least a couple of skilled and accomplished parliamentarians from the community who had volunteered their services to the board, and the motion was passed at that meeting. The motion was made by Trustee [Erik] Johnson and seconded by Trustee [John] Moeller, that chair Giffin would look into getting someone involved to deal with the procedures of the meeting as a parliamentarian. That never came up again. It was never reported on again. Nothing was ever done. It drifted into the ether, as does so much of the work ostensibly done by the board.

Giffin: I hear the term defensiveness, and you’re right, there probably is a little defensiveness. I’ve worked on several boards. The current board that you have is an excellent board that works very hard. I think one of the things that has happened is that in today’s world, people want answers right away, and if they don’t get them, they start posting on social media, they start the rumor mill, and basically they don’t have any rules that they have to follow. The board is the legal entity the board has to follow legal rules. I was criticized by someone on the street because I refuse to answer questions with respect to the ongoing civil suit. It’s just that simple. So when you continually get pressed on the same thing over and over, I think it’s only natural that you get defensive. This board has been accused of secret meetings, of hiding things, of doing everything that you could possibly imagine, none of which has happened. The only thing that has happened is the current board has spent many hours of their own time trying to resolve various issues before the board, and one of which is the long range plan. Before the night’s over, I’d really like an opportunity to take you through the long range plan.

Bussler: Right now, I think the board is is very much aligned. There almost seems to be a bit of group think that’s taking place right now. So by having some change take place with the board, I think you will introduce some new opinions, some new perspectives, and I don’t think that they necessarily need to be in conflict, or create conflict. You can bring those ideas forward and work collaboratively to find some new solutions that will gather improvements for the entire board. So I don’t, I don’t, if I am elected, I don’t intend to come into this with any sort of animosity. I want to collaborate.

Question 8

Outgoing Trustee Charlene Wells (not seeking re-election) asked the final question saying, “I ran because people quit a dysfunctional board. So this board has worked really well together. Enough of my advertising, but just so you know where I come from. The question to everyone is, how would you handle all the misinformation and the disinformation that people put on Facebook and social media. People that alluded that they can’t talk about things, or say that they can’t talk about things, there are provincial guidelines that they have, but people post what they want on social media, and I want to know how we’re going to counteract that in the community?

Chorneyko: I think there needs to be openness and honesty. Answers need to be made. People need to be informed of actually, what’s going on. So that’s how you do it, is let people know what’s really happening.

Giffin: The board does its best to let the community know what’s going on. We try very hard. I mentioned a moment ago the long range plan. The board spent money advertising not only a survey, but a public meeting so we could seek input from the community. For our survey, we got 36 responses. For our public meeting for the long range plan, we had less than a dozen people come. Now the long range plan is out, and certain people continue to attack it. The long range plan is simply a road map. There is no one on the board that is able to predict 10 years down the road. There’s no one on the board able to predict two years, but you have to have a starting place. And part of the reason that we’re in the situation we’re in now, again before my time, is a new fire hall was built. And if you go back and you look at your tax assessment when that fire hall was built, it was quite high. And then after the hall was built, the board decided to drop the budget back down, and the budget stayed low for many years. Well, guess what? It caught up with this, and now we’re in a situation where insurance is up 30% over the year. I can’t remember how much the gas prices were up. We need insurance, and we need gas for the trucks. So we sat down and we had a long, hard crunch at the budget, and hopefully the new board will do the same thing. The long range plan is a living document that needs to be reviewed every year.

Bowers: This is definitely something I’ve thought about a lot. So one of the things I know about me is I’m not really good at thinking on my feet, but I’m very good at thinking sitting down. I’m good at responding things in writing. And one of the things I think I could bring to offer this forward is to help out [current Trustee Ray Appel], who’s been working away at putting together an FAQ site and responding to some of the questions that keep coming out. And it doesn’t have to just be the questions that show up at the at the meeting. It can also be the questions that show up on Facebook. So if things are starting to go malignantly on Facebook, that we can track those things down and say, okay, this is what people are saying, and this is what the truth is. And so that’s one way. I’m really hoping we can get the website a bit bigger. I was actually quite happy to go on to whatever, whoever created the Chronicles [GFPIDChronicles.ca], because there was a couple of things there that I could use while I was investigating and having this meeting. So I think a lot of that can be handled on a good website. And people who are willing to kind of do a little crawling around Facebook pages and discover what needs to be addressed that’s going on in the community Now as that’s said, there’s lots of stuff that you’re not going to be able to talk about because there are things that are confidential, but the things that we can talk about, we can talk about it.

Mercier: the main school board could use to combat disinformation and misinformation is, as I have mentioned, to adopt the Open Meeting standards endorsed and developed by the Office of the Ombudsperson, which clearly lay out policies and procedures for in camera meetings and regular meetings, which are the only kinds of meetings that the bylaws of this district allow. And yet, there are working meetings. There are, I’ve kept, at least four kinds of meetings articulated in policy that is not or is poorly published, I would advocate that the board publish its policies. Again, I bring up the elections policy, which doesn’t exist in published form. The code of conduct for the trustees doesn’t exist in published form. Things like that, so that the public has access to those pieces of information. I would also advocate that the board to change its practice in terms of keeping and recording and publishing correct records of motions past, decisions made, actions taken. Because right now, it’s not possible to say this action was undertaken at this time. This is the motion. These are the words of the motion that was possessed, that was proposed and passed, because those records simply either do not exist or are not made available, or are not available. I have worked very hard to access a number of them and been told that records have been improperly deleted by mistake, or simply things were done over the phone, and no records were kept. I think the starting point for this, as with any local government, should be maximum transparency – any information that can be released, should be released, proactively, and reasons should have to be given explicitly for information which is withheld.

Bussler: So similarly, I think the best way to to counter disinformation is with facts. So let’s be more transparent, put more information out there. I’m not one to engage on social media, so obviously that would not be the venue. But it’s been already alluded to, the GFPID Chronicles website that recently popped up, is a great resource of facts from what I’ve seen. I’ve used it to prepare for this meeting as well. So if we can work towards developing something like that for the trustees, so we can put more information out there. Wayne mentioned about even sharing the information. So I have participated through Freedom of Information processes as well, and have met roadblocks. So if I did become a trustee, I would provide more information without having to go through those processes. There’s no reason to, you know, not disclose certain contracts, agreements, etc, if they’re not commercially sensitive. Just to be more transparent is my objective in this.

Jackson: Social media. Extrapolation on the imaginary is a big problem, as people are willing to believe whatever they want to believe. I believe writing down appropriate stuff is critical. I think where it’s the law it should be written and obviously there’s stuff, personal information, that isn’t going to be disclosed, I try to be accurate when I speak. I try to be accurate when I write stuff. So obviously, accuracy is important, and whatever we need to do to make that happen, I think is a worthwhile cause.