On June 4th there was a well-attended All-Candidates Meeting for the 2025 Election of GFPID trustees. The Q+A meeting was held at the AGI Hall and facilitated by Gabriola Talks.
The Sounder News also published a Q+A with candidates on June 4th, 2025. The Sounder will have a full report on the meeting, which we will link to as soon as it is published.
The 2025 GFPID candidates introduce themselves
What follows are the introductory comments from each candidate, in which they introduce themselves and say what they stand for. Each candidate was allowed two minutes for their introduction.
Chris Bowers
When I told one of my friends that I'd been asked to run for the fire board, he said, "Why the hell would you do that?" My answer is in the Sounder. So tonight, I'll explain why handing off the fire department to the RDN is a terrible idea. But first, given the variety of opinions of those who might be elected on the 18th, I have the background to deal with that. I have a degree in social work, worked in that field for 30 years, have a good sense of humor when dealing with conflict. My first instinct is always to make peace, and I'm willing to put lots of time and effort into that, until I get mad, and then I go to work. Which brings me back to why I'm running for the fire board. In the eight years I ran the Flying Shingle newspaper, I became well aware of the history of the fire fight with the fire department. Any organization can and should be improved. But not only is the fire department not broken, it is one of the crown jewels of our Gabriola. It's ahead of the curve professionally, and it attracts volunteers when volunteer recruitment has tanked nationally. The real problems lie in the prolonged, unreasonable, unfair, and, in my opinion, just plain unhinged attacks that the department has been forced to endure ever since the fire board had the audacity to build us a fire hall instead of a quonset hut. Insidious, feed-it-poison-and-then-blame-it-for-being-sick tactics have been eating away at the Department for years, starting with outrageous attacks on character and ending with expending thousands of dollars on freedom of information requests, all possibly culminating and moving the power to make decisions about what will happen to our fire department out of our own hands. As I noted, that solution does not address the actual problem, and that's why I’m running for the fire board.
Oliver Bussler
Hi there. My name is Oliver Bussler, and I'm here today to get your vote for fire trustee. Fire trustees are responsible for providing oversight to the improvement district. Unlike my other candidates here, I think that the current set of trustees are not doing a very good job, as is indicated by the fact that we're seeing very large increases in budgets; we're seeing dysfunction like lawsuits; we're seeing a lot of FOI requests, which suggests a lack of transparency; we're seeing a […] fire fighting department that is unionized, secret meetings. There's a high rate of turnover right now. So what I'd like to do if I become trustee, if I get your vote, is focus on accountability and spending, transparency and governance, and I'll always put the firefighters first as well. I bring to you a background in industry. So I've negotiated contracts, I've worked with human resources. I have quite a bit of leadership experience, both in industry and working for government. I currently am a paramedic on the island, so I continue to work with the firefighters. I was a firefighter until recently, for five years at the GVFD, only just recently resigned from that department. At BC Ambulance, I also am the union rep, the union steward, so I bring that to the table as well, as we have union negotiations coming up. So yeah, that's my pitch. And I welcome further questions. Thank you.
Dave Chorneyko
Hello, everybody. It's good to see everybody in here. I probably know half the people in this room, if not a few more, both sides of the divide, so it's good to see everybody in here. I have a deep and strong belief in the integrity of the fire service, and I believe the fire department should be an honorable and respected organization in the community. This is why I'm running, I hope to bring that to this organization. I've been in the [...] Gabriola Volunteer Fire Department for eight years. I retired from it as a captain two and a half years ago. Prior to that, I was in the city of Kimberly Fire Department for eight years. So I know how the fire service works. I know the people involved in this fire department. I know the community. I know the issues around and the politics around this fire department. […] Another reason I'm running, is I think that—there's the chart that I handed out—I think there's a loss of financial control in this organization. And if you take a look at the chart, the line on top is the tax levy, the line at the bottom is inflation. I put the cost of the new fire hall in there in yellow, just to show […] how significant that was, you can see where today is. I'm not going to talk much more about this. I'm hoping people ask questions about this draft and to really understand what's happening with the finances in this place. So anyways, thank you. I hope for questions.
Paul Giffin
Good evening everyone, and thank you for coming out tonight and again, good luck with the hockey game. I'm running for re election on the board. The fire department is an integral part of this island. A lot of good people in the fire department, the board that is currently serving has worked very hard and very long hours to get things where they are. I've heard comments with respect to the budget, hopefully we can address them later, [I’m] more than prepared to defend the budget. I've also heard various negative comments. I've heard comments about moving [the] fire department to the RDN. Hopefully we'll get some questions about that. We've had a very busy time of late, and we continue to move forward and keep the fire department at the high level that it's at. And keep the fire department in a position where they're able to maintain the FQS, maintain the EMR program, and maintain the services that they do to you on the island. Not to forget […] the Fire Safe program for your homes. The members of the department put a lot of hours in to get these things done, a lot of hours behind the scenes, and I think we should all appreciate that.
Rick Jackson
I’m Rick Jackson, I know many of you here. I [...] been with the fire department for, well, since 1984 and I was chief since 1994, so 26 years I acted as fire chief. I basically decided I would put my name in for this because I have a pretty strong historical […] connection with the department and a pretty good [...] operational sense of it, even though I've been away for five years now. Something was mentioned here, I’d just like to touch on, is some of the things, like the budget and stuff like that. Historically, our department has been amazing for the management of the budget. So amazing, in fact, when I looked at the charts produced at the last meeting in the fall there, it showed we pretty much flatlined over the last 10 years or so. Part of the reason is there was a strong sense of community, and myself and other members weren't all that much interested in how much money you were getting. I never asked for or received a raise for probably the last nine or 10 years I was chief. So basically, we were trying to keep things, especially after the new fire hall was built, trying to keep things down. And the last I looked, we still had one of the cheapest mill rates, 49 cents, the last time I looked, which is the what you get charged for your property values, 49 cents per $1,000 of value. Salt Spring is 85, Cedar, I think is 60 cents. Anyway, that with the superior tank shuttle accreditation, which saves us a lot of money on insurance. I guess my point is, I think this board and previous boards have done a very good job of managing our money, and I'm sure we'll continue to do that. Thanks.
Wayne Mercier
Hello. My name is Wayne Mercier. If you've taken time out of your lives to be here tonight, you're probably familiar with the fact that I've been engaged in a contretemps with the Board of Trustees of the improvement district for about the past two years; since, actually, the last time I attended a meeting in this space of this kind in which I sat in that position. Since then, I have been involved with work of the Gabriola Housing Society for the last few years, during which time, I have had the great pleasure of working with a board that works clearly, transparently and with excellent record keeping, and over the last short period of time, I've had the opportunity to see how large sums of money are accounted for, tracked, spent and administered. And I decided to put my name forward because I felt like my credibility would suffer after two years of criticism, if I wouldn't stand up here and be willing to answer questions to you, and I don't actually think that anybody out there is going to tell me that my responses tonight "will be taken under advisement," or I "should rest easy," or that I "will receive a response in due course", because that's not communication. I think it's important that we separate the Gabriola Volunteer Fire Department, which is a stellar organization made up of people who give up themselves and their time with extensive effort for comparatively little remuneration, and the Gabriola Fire Protection Improvement District, which is what you are electing, it's our local government that taxes you. I believe, and I'm running for and will advocate for, transparency in finance. I note that the last finance report was from September 2024. Also transparency in administration, clear records of meetings, clear kinds of meetings, no hidden policies containing subtypes of meetings, no adjacent policies containing new types of meetings, no working meetings, no closed meetings. I know that we in the last five years, since Rick Jackson retired, we now have…. [timer cuts him off]
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.)