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 3
You know, 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 [...] work in Nanaimo, if you miss the 5:20 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?
Ed. note: the provincial government sets the rules for improvement district elections. Voter eligibility, trustee eligibility, timing/notice of election, and rights of appeal requirements are legislated. From the government website:
The improvement district board of trustees has discretion to decide all other election procedures.
...Improvement district election procedures generally set out:
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- The form of the ballot
- How a ballot must be marked
- How ballots are collected, for example, a sealed ballot box
- How and when ballots are to be counted
- How ballots are to be kept safe until the statutory period of two weeks for challenging an election has passed
The Local Government Act sets standards for handling ballots (sections 121, 141-143).
ANSWERS
Paul Giffin
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, now don't hold me to this number, in excess of $2,000 by the time all the payments are made. So [...] that would be one of the concerns. The main concern right now is the security of the ballots.
Dave Chorneyko
Yes, to advanced voting, we need to do that. Security of ballots, I understand it's an issue, but it's got to be resolvable. Can't be that hard to secure the ballots. What was it, advanced voting and…?
QUESTIONER: Mail in ballots. They're mandated by the islands trust, and they're mandated for the rdn. Why are they not mandated for the improvement district?
DC: Yeah, if they can do it why can't we? Sure.
Chris Bowers
So when I asked about this, I kind of got the same information that has already been expressed, the big issue is securing the ballots. I think there's a huge thing that happens through the RDN in terms of being very, very careful that there's no possible hanky panky 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, so I'd certainly be interested in exploring that. I think it would be great if people could have advanced voting, because that makes it a whole lot easier for everybody. And 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 maybe again, when that, if that stops happening, other things that really should be happening can start happening, and that's pretty much it, I think.
Wayne Mercier
So candidate Giffin referred to the times, the old times, circa six years ago, or something, where things were done from the floor, nominations were had, things 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 yes, 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 the thing that's just, it's just commonly done. We're in Gabriola island, 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.
Oliver Bussler
[…] I just received our tax 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 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 [...] 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. So yes, I'm pro, what way to say, I could see mail in ballots being somewhat problematic, but multiple voting days seems like something that should be manageable.
Rick 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 then we got swarmed, and that created an issue. Some people said, "Hey, this wasn't legal," and took it to court. And yeah, that 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.
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.)