On June 4th there was a well-attended All-Candidates Meeting for the 2025 Election of GFPID trustees. The meeting was held at the AGI Hall and facilitated by Gabriola Talks. The Sounder News will have a full report on the meeting, which we will link to as soon as it is published. This is part of a series of blog posts documenting the questions and responses at the ACM.
QUESTION 2
This is for Dave. In the interest of transparency, could you tell us about your intimidation of John Moeller. A text in the last couple of weeks that you sent to him was threatening and intimidating. You want, if you want to explain that to the voters?
ANSWERS
Dave Chorneyko
Thank you. 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 of the trustees should step down. So I was talking to John, and I just, I don't think it was that—actually I can bring it up. I got time.
[Dave Chorneyko searches for a document and then reads from his device]
“So hey John, I understand that the election is coming up soon. As you know, I plan on running. I just want to touch base with you on the dam deal thing. It's my opinion that you have […] 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 this buried because it makes me complicit. It is not on my agenda to expose this, but it certainly is on Wayne’s. (Makes a side remark: "I don't know if it is or not.") If it comes up, it should be reasonable, which should be a reasonable expectation, I'll put it on the table and talk about this in public. Be prepared for this. I don't want this to create conflict between you and me. Be prepared to wear this conflict of interest in public. An effective way to defuse this is to step down from the trustees now, take your victory lap and call it a day. Then if this comes up, it'll be, yeah, maybe next trustee had a conflict of interest.”
So this is one of the things I wanted to talk— [cut off by time limit buzzer]
Rick Jackson
Okay, well, the dam thing, that's interesting, that was still, that was something that started, the dam and the hydrant was something that I started. We put that hydrant in, down across from the […] ferry lineup, 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 bought all that property. At some point, John Moeller bought the property off […] Mike Peacock, and that already had a water line installed to it from from the dam. So when, [...] Rooks, as I recall, wanted the fire department to take 100% of the water supply from that dam, and we weren't particularly interested in that expense. I believe that we settled for something 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 which, I don't know which. And that Rooks’ subdivision ended up paying 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 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 as the government made them do it. Anyway, that basically is my recollection of, I don't see John as having a conflict of interest over that.
Oliver Bussler
I really don't have much to say on that matter out there, other than the text didn't sound very intimidating, but that's just my opinion.
Wayne Mercier
So I have talked about the dam in public a number of times. This is how I understand the issue. The law requires an improvement district, when making contracts about land or works, to formalize such contracts through the enactment of a bylaw. That's the statute. There is a joint works agreement that exists between Potlatch Properties, the improvement district, and Mr. John Moeller 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 civil, 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 through 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, and in my opinion—I'm not an expert—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 over-weening jackass, a smug little twit, or [unintelligible because of laughter] smug little prick better felt matched his feelings.
Chris Bowers
I'll be really short. I didn't see the 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.
Paul 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 a water license for part of the water behind that dam. It has been explained at the last two annual general meetings by the accountant exactly what happened. [Note: see 2021 p10 and 2022 p11 audited financial statements.] There was nothing illegal done. It has been explained at two that I can think of here, monthly meetings, there has been nothing illegal done. The board is audited every year by an accountant to ensure that there's no hanky panky. The charitable receipts are reviewed by Revenue Canada. There was nothing done illegally or improperly. With respect to John Moeller, 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, is rude. I'll leave it at that.
NOTES: These transcripts were made from audio recordings. Editing is minimal, for the most part only to remove extra or repeated words or add punctuation. Any indecipherable speech is indicated as such. We have added links to referenced documents or institutions where possible. We've done our best to make this accurate; if you are aware of anything that should be corrected, please let us know through the contact form.
Anyone who had a question for the candidates submitted a slip of paper with their name on it as they registered their attendance; the names were put into a question box. A set of six names were initially drawn from the box to ask their questions. Two more names were drawn later, because time allowed for additional questions, so a total of eight questions were asked and answered. Responses were managed so that the order of response was not predictable. Both questions and answers were time-limited and the limits were actively moderated. (We commend Gabriola Talks for a very well run meeting, and thank all of the candidates for working within the constraints applied to them.)