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Tag: All Candidates Meeting

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The All Candidates Meeting was held on Wednesday, April 22nd, at the Agi Hall. Thanks to Gabriola Talks for setting it up and very capably running it.

Seven questions from the audience were pulled from a hat and posed to the candidates. We are reproducing the questions below (some are edited slightly to remove extraneous words). We look forward to seeing the answers in the next issue of the Sounder, and will link to that when we can.

QUESTION 1

The Board consistently struggles over which issues fall under Governance versus Operations. What specific steps would you take to clarify and unify the Board’s position?

QUESTION 2

Are you in favour of hiring a third fire chief? And if so, how do you justify hiring more full-time staff, or increasing staff in general, while call volume is decreasing?

QUESTION 3

My question is about replacement of the fire trucks. Last year I was concerned about how could we replace them and so I looked up for tools and regs  about rules and how you qualify for insurance, and the standard is for twenty years. Does anybody know, on the board, what the extension is for ... typically for a rural fire department? Anybody? Raise your hands? Nope? Okay. The extension is, you could go to 30 years given you meet some provisions for maintenance and you can demonstrate that the truck's truly viable. So I'm very concerned that we buy vehicles at 16 years, this year, when we didn't need to. [followed by a request for comment]

QUESTION 4

Since this is a body that is largely a governance body, one of the concerns I have as a ratepayer and a person who has attended these meetings is that at times I feel that the meetings are not run as well as they could be. And my concern is that I have the impression that a number of times I was disappointed in the quality of the meeting and the way it was run. I don't think that we have to have six hour meetings. I want to ask you each: Do you have a good grounding and an understanding of Robert's Rules of Order and do you feel confident that if you were elected chair that you could run effective meetings?

QUESTION 5

Matt, this is a question to you, but others can feel free to say something at the end. You seem to have aligned yourself with the D.O.W. candidates from last year's election. During that election they were proponents of lowering the budget, yet once elected they have dramatically increased it by thousands of dollars. And you say that third party expenses and legal experts' expenses are out of control. Where is the discrepancy between what they campaigned for and what they allowed to happen, and what do you propose to do to remedy it?

QUESTION 6

Recently I attended a seminar presented by Steve Earle about climate change and just how our climate is changing; it's getting hotter and hotter in the summers, less and less water, some people's wells are running dry. I just wanted the candidates' thoughts on maybe looking forward, what are we going to do for water for fighting fires and are there other things that we can do to mitigate fire hazards in the summer time.

QUESTION 7

My understanding of one of the core responsibilities of governance boards is the supervision and direction of the fire chief. So, I would like to hear from people who are currently on the board as to what processes and protocols are in place to insure that our fire chief gets appropriate supervision? And I would like to hear from people who are applying to be on the board as to what they think that should be, and what they would be talking about if they were in a position of being on the board, to ensure that our fire chief gets the supervision that he's entitled to.

We expect that all candidates' answers will be published in the Gabriola Sounder. We will link to that article when it is available on the Sounder website.

Update, April 24th: We note that candidate Matt Dow has already published the questions asked at the meeting, and the answers he gave to those questions. You can view this content on Matt's website, on the page titled Gabe Community: Questions & Answers.

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As we all know, people running for election often talk in general terms. This makes sense; you can’t address every detail, and if you focus in too tightly you are likely to leave something out that you didn’t want to. Or you might be worried that something you don’t know about will prevent you from fulfilling a promise.

However, general statements are not helpful when it comes to holding people to account for taking the actions they say they will take.  Apart from rarely being measurable, a big problem is that vague promises can be understood and interpreted in very different ways, and people can use exactly the same language to describe fundamentally different approaches to issues. So:

What concrete actions are the candidates for Gabriola Fire Protection Improvement District Trustees committing to? We’ve gone through the Q+A published in the Sounder and the transcripts of the All Candidates Meeting (see earlier posts) and made a list of specific actions that have been mentioned by the candidates. The names of people who have committed to action are appended to each item on the list. Not everyone used the same language to describe what they plan to do, so some list items are paraphrased, but we have included names where we think their intent was clear.

...continue reading "But what exactly will you do?"

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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.

...continue reading "GFPID 2025 All Candidates Meeting – Question 8"

Published on

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]

...continue reading "GFPID 2025 All Candidates Meeting – Question 7"

Published on

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?

...continue reading "GFPID 2025 All Candidates Meeting – Question 6"

Published on

On June 4th there was a well-attended All-Candidates Meeting for the 2025 Election of GFPID trustees. The Q+A meeting was held at the AGI Hall and facilitated by Gabriola Talks. 

The Sounder News also published a Q+A with candidates on June 4th, 2025. The Sounder will have a full report on the meeting, which we will link to as soon as it is published.

The 2025 GFPID candidates introduce themselves

What follows are the introductory comments from each candidate, in which they introduce themselves and say what they stand for. Each candidate was allowed two minutes for their introduction.

...continue reading "GFPID 2025 All Candidates Meeting – Intros"