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 6
Thank you. Just a response to a comment Mr Giffin made earlier with regard to firefighters always asking for additional services and [...] material items, that's not correct. We've got 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, not the fire department, but specific to the board, many Gabriola residents, and the fact that you, Mr. Giffin, have held the key position as the board chairman throughout the past six years. How can electing you to yet another term help resolve the extensive turmoil, lawsuits, staff dismissals and internal grievances?
ANSWERS
Paul Giffin
Thank you for the question. The board has responded to every complaint that has been received. Unfortunately, some people are not happy with the way the 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 [redacted] at a meeting of the firefighters to show lack of confidence in my leadership on 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 have pay raises. They've got the 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.
Oliver Bussler
So I guess 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 not in the audience today, so they can't confirm that, but that did take place. And then in terms of the complaints policy as as I mentioned, I think complaints need to be dealt with appropriately and to 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 in terms of yeah, just I think we should be held to account and [...] every complaint needs to be dealt with appropriately.
Chris Bowers
I'm not familiar with the situation, so I'm not going to comment.
David Chorneyko
Thank you. You know, 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 petitions. So, I mean, that's my opinion on that.
And Mr. Giffin, like, 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, like, you need to accept that.
Rick Jackson
I’m not an insider 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 had more power than the bloody RCMP, I could walk onto your property and say, Stop running your lawnmower, put out your fire. And a lot of people wouldn'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 complaint. 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 a kind of a festering situation, then going off Island is probably the smartest move to do, to come up with, you know, a clean resolution. And that's about all I've got to say.
Wayne Mercier
I don't know Mr. Giffin as a person. I've heard many things about it. 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, and 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 is 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 are also, we're going under, there's a chief, a deputy chief and an assistant chief, well, a proposed Assistant Chief. The proposed assistant chief is proposed because of the administrative burden on those staff people. And so the justification is that 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 the staff of what is, it’s gotta be like, 45 now, 43, 44? because all of the firefighters are, of course, employees of the improvement district. They receive 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 their hands of all the responsibilities of administration, because we have no staff, we're a volunteer board, is at best, disingenuous.
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.)