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 7
The past 20, 30 years or so, it seems to me there is a systems dysfunction. I've heard a lot of talk this evening about the exact ways in which the process is supposed to work, but I've heard nothing about some other form of coming to agreement, and that is through mediation. I heard none of that, except from Chris when she opened her comments, she alluded to that, and I'm really hoping that the board is open to trying to find a way of mediating their dysfunctional board. [Missed first part of question, updated after seeing Sounder News transcript]
ANSWERS
Chris Bowers
Yeah, it's always good to have a professional at hand. The first step, really, as a former couples counsellor, is to have two people or more who are willing to actually do the work, and so that, I think that's the first question, is, who really is willing to kind of listen to each other, and how do we set that situation up in a way that will work for everyone? I have some ideas about that, and it would certainly be an interesting discussion to have if we were just going to talk about, "how are we going to talk." That would take a fair amount of people being willing to take a chance and trust each other, and so that might be a big step. But me, personally, what I would like to do is be on the board and see how things go and as things unfold. Just try to be helpful, and [...] help people sort of work through what's happening in the room, as well as the discussion.
David Chorneyko
Thanks. You know, a lot of the consternation around this place is around transparency and secrecy, like the transparency, this place needs to be opened up, and so that that would resolve of some of it anyways. And just conversation, people need to be talking. The defensiveness I find is off the charts around this place, and so the defensiveness, we need to work at coming up with solutions with that. And so those are kind of the two, two things that I could see helping out quite a bit, although I understand your your question was bigger than that, and it needs to be more, but I don't have anything for you right now.
Rick Jackson
Yeah, part of the reason I decided I'd run is I feel my years of familiarity. I could help mediate the board. Historic knowledge often [...] can help explain how things got to where they're at, and that often is a step in being able to, you know, not let things get worse. Yeah, I think that would be about all I’d say.
Another clarification, I think it was mentioned the corporate officer [...]—the corporate officer does not run the department. The corporate officer does the bidding of the collective will of the trustees, and they follow the trustees' orders. And I believe some of the issues we're faced with these days are possibly a misunderstanding of that person in the role. So that's basically all I have to say.
[Ed.note: see Improvement District Administration for the role of the Corporate Officer.]
Wayne Mercier
Mr. Jackson, is, of course, completely correct that the corporate officer does not run the fire department.
[Interjected: or the Trustees.]
No, of course, they don't run the Board of Trustees. They, as you say, carry out the will of the board in just the same way as the fire chief carries out the will of the board. That's the role of the board. The corporate officer has exactly the same relationship with money as the fire chief has with fire. If it's on fire, it's the job of the fire chief. If it concerns money, it's the job of the corporate officer. Very simple, it's set out in a number of documents with which I'm sure you're familiar.
In terms of acrimony, I have no personal beef whatsoever with anybody on board or anybody representing it. Even as recently as a couple of months ago, I had a number of very congenial exchanges with Mr. Giffin during his chairing of the board. I managed to clear up a number of points of contention, and we seemed to all be having a good time. I'm not a fan of his policy decisions, not a fan of policy decisions with the board in general, but I have no personal beef with them whatsoever. I have nothing to gain from this. And so what I think is necessary is not mediation, but professional conduct.
And I think it's interesting that in May 2023 we had, after the last very contentious and acrimonious meeting and election and stuff that took place in this space, there were at least a couple of skilled and accomplished parliamentarians from the community who had volunteered their services to the board, and a motion was passed at that meeting. The motion was made by Trustee Johnson and seconded by trustee Moeller that chair Giffin would look into getting someone involved to deal with the procedures of the meetings of parliamentarians. That never came up again. It was never reported on again. Nothing was ever done. It drifted into the ether, as does so much of the work extensively done by the board.
Paul Giffin
I hear the term defensiveness, and you're right, there probably is a little defensiveness. I've worked on several boards. The current board that you have is an excellent board that works very hard. I think one of the things that has happened is that in today's world, people want answers right away. If they don't get them, they start posting on social media, they start the rumor mill, and basically they don't have any rules that they have to follow. The board is a legal entity. The board has to follow legal rules. I was criticized by someone on the street because I refused to answer questions with respect to the ongoing civil suit. I can't answer them. It's just that simple. So when you continually get pressed on the same thing over and over, I think it's only natural that you get defensive. This board has been accused of secret meetings, of hiding things, of doing everything that you could possibly imagine, none of which has happened. The only thing that has happened is the current board has spent many hours of their own time trying to resolve various issues before the board, and one of which is the long range plan. And before the night's over, I'd really like an opportunity to take you through the long range plan. Thank you.
Oliver Bussler
Thanks for your question, yeah, right now, I think the board is very much aligned, there almost seems to be a bit of group-think that's taking place right now. So by having some change take place with the board, I think you will introduce some new opinions, some new perspectives, and I don't think that they necessarily need to be in conflict, or create conflicts. You can bring those ideas forward and work collaboratively to find some new solutions that will gather improvements for the entire board. So I don't, [...] if I am elected, I don't intend to come into this with any sort of animosity, I want to collaborate. Thank you.
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.)