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 the last of a series of blog posts documenting the eight questions and responses at the ACM.
QUESTION
I'm a trustee. I didn't run for re-election. I ran because people quit. People who quit a dysfunctional board. [unintelligible]. So this board has worked really well together. So enough of my advertising. But just so you know, where I come from.
The question to everyone is: how we can handle all the misinformation and the disinformation that people put on Facebook and social media? People have alluded that they can't talk about things, or say that they can't talk about things—there are provincial guidelines that they have; but people post what they want on social media, and I want to know how you're going to counteract that in the community, because I'd like to hear what you candidates think.
ANSWERS
David Chorneyko
Well, I think there needs to be openness and honesty, like, answer people. Answers need to be made and, yeah, people need to be informed of actually what's going on. So that's how you do it, is let people know what's really happening.
Paul Giffin
The board does its best to let the community know what's going on. We try very hard. I mentioned a moment ago the long range plan. The board spent money advertising, not only a survey, but a public meeting, so we could seek input from the community. For our survey, we got 36 responses. For our public meeting for the long range plan, we had less than a dozen people come. Now the long range plan is out, and certain people continue to attack it. The long range plan is simply a road map. There is no one on the board that is able to predict ten years down the road. There's no one on the board able to predict two years down the road, but you have to have a starting place. And part of the reason that we're in the situation we're in now, again before my time, is a new fire hall was built. And if you go back and you look at your tax assessment, and that fire hall was built, it was quite high. And then after the hall was built, the board decided to drop the budget back down, and the budget stayed low for many years. Well, guess what? It caught up with us, and now we're in a situation where insurance is up 30% over the year. I can't remember how much the gas prices were up. We need insurance, and we need gas for the trucks. So we sat down and we had a long, hard crunch at the budget, and hopefully the new board will do the same thing. The long range plan is a living document that needs to be reviewed every year.
Chris Bowers
This is definitely something I've thought about a lot. So one of the things I know about me is I'm not really good at thinking on my feet, but I'm very good at thinking sitting down. I'm good at responding things in writing. And one of the things I think I could bring to offer this board is to help out Ray, who's been working away at putting together an F-A-Q, FAQ, I guess they call the thing, or the website, and responding to some of the questions that keep coming out. And it doesn't have to just be the questions that show up at the at the meeting. It can also be the questions that show up on Facebook. So if things are starting to go malignantly on Facebook, then we can track those things down and say, "Okay, this is what people are saying, and this is what the truth is." So that's one way. I'm really hoping we can get the website a bit bigger. I was actually quite happy to go on to whatever, whoever created the Chronicles, because there was a couple of things there that I could use while I was investigating, in having this meeting. So I think a lot [...] that can be handled on a good website, and people who are willing to kind of do a little crawling around the Facebook pages and discover what needs to be addressed that's going on in the community. Now that said, there's lots of stuff that you're not going to be able to talk about, because there are things that are confidential, but the things that we can talk about, we can talk about it.
Wayne Mercier
So I think the main tool that the board could use to combat disinformation and misinformation is, as I have mentioned, to adopt the Open Meeting Standards endorsed and developed by the Office of the Ombudsperson, which clearly lay out policies and procedures for in camera meetings and regular meetings, which are the only types of meetings that the bylaws of this district allow. And yet, there are working meetings. There are, I've counted at least four kinds of meetings devel— articulated in policy that is not, or is poorly published. I would advocate that the board publish its policies. Again, I bring up the elections policy, which doesn't exist in published form. The code of conduct for the trustees doesn't exist in published form, things like that, so that the public has access to those pieces of information. I would also advocate that the board change its practice in terms of keeping and recording and publishing correct records of motions passed, decisions made, actions taken, because right now it's not possible to say, this action was undertaken at this time, this is the motion, these are the words of the motion [...] that was proposed and passed, because those records simply either do not exist or are not made available, or are not available, and I have worked very hard to access a number of them and been told that records have been improperly deleted by mistake, or simply things were done over the phone and no records were kept. I think the starting point for this, as with any local government, should be the maximum transparency, any information that can be released, should be released, proactively, and reasons should have to be given explicitly for information which is withheld.
Oliver Bussler
So similarly, I think the best way to counter disinformation is with fact. So let's be more transparent, put more information out there. I'm not one to engage on social media, so obviously that would not be the venue, but I, it's been already alluded to that GFPID Chronicles website that recently popped up is a great resource of facts from what I’ve seen, I used it to prepare for this meeting as well. So if we can work towards developing something like that for the trustees, so we can put more information out there. Wayne mentioned about even sharing that information. So I have participated through, in Freedom of Information processes as well, and have met roadblocks. So I if I did become a trustee I would provide more information without having to go through those processes. There's no reason to, you know, not disclose certain contracts, agreements, etc, if they're not commercially sensitive. So, yeah, just be more transparent. That would be my objective in this.
Rick Jackson
Social media… Donald Trump recently told us that Biden was executed in 2020 and a lot of people seem really willing to believe that. Extrapolation on the imaginary is a big problem, as people are willing to believe whatever they want to believe. I believe writing down appropriate stuff is critical. I think where it's the law, it should be written, and and obviously there's stuff, personal information, there's stuff that isn't going to be disclosed. I try to be accurate with when I speak. I try to be accurate when I write stuff. So, you know, obviously accuracy is important, and whatever we need to do to make that happen, I think is a worthwhile cause.
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.)