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.
[Ed. note: some answers below reference the complaints policy, which is not on the GVFD website but can be found here.]
QUESTION 5
Okay, my question is for Oliver, given that your wife is a named witness in a lawsuit for the plaintiffs against the Gabriola Fire District Board, the fire chief, 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, thank you.
ANSWERS
Oliver 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. That's right. 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 wife, Jennifer Knight. So in terms of the fact that there are multiple named parties, I feel like we are grown up enough that I, 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 behaviour 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 would ensure that if 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 instead was to hire two different consultants. So it's not, 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 from any conflict of interest, obviously.
Rick Jackson
I'm not familiar with any of this, so I'm going to pass on this.
Paul 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 contractor, 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 the 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 totally defend itself is unfair.
David Chorneyko
No comment.
Chris Bowers
No comment.
Wayne Mercier
I have no relevant or insider knowledge about the particular matter, but I would like to point out that there is a sad lack of policy in the institution around complaints, as with 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. That's all.
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.)