Des first came to the Sunshine Coast in 1987, when his wife’s parents lived in Davis Bay. He and his family lived in Horseshoe Bay for years, treating Gibsons as their backyard, before building their house here and settling full-time about ten years ago.

“Gibsons is just a beautiful little community,” he says. “We have incredible neighbours. It’s friendly, it’s got so much going for it.” But he’s also watched it change rapidly, especially the impact of rising costs and taxes on people’s pocketbooks, which is a big part of why he’s running.

Less than most people assume. B.C. uses a “weak mayor” system: residents elect a council, and the mayor’s main job is to chair it. Real power sits with council, where a majority of three votes decides most things. The mayor only steps in to break a tie.

Des sees his role as building consensus among the four councillors elected alongside him: “I have no power over them. I’m just an equal vote.” His plan is to get council to direct staff toward budgets built around core services first, then work outward from there.

The Town of Gibsons’ own public financial disclosures: the annual Statement of Financial Information filed with the province, which includes Schedule 5 (every payment to suppliers over $25,000), staff and council remuneration, and the full financial statements, including the statement of operations by department. All of it is already on the town’s website; Des wants it read, linked, and actually used in decision-making.

His ask, if elected: get council support to direct staff to prepare a budget at 0–3% (inflation), see what has to be cut or modified to hit that, and build the conversation around core services first, informed by economic, social, and environmental trade-offs.

Des’s background is running construction and consulting projects, which he says is mostly about breaking complex problems into decisions and putting good teams in a room together. “When you have a good team in the room, good things get done... five good people are always going to be better than one good person.”

He sees this election’s eight new council candidates as exactly that kind of team, and his role as helping guide that group toward workable, well-explained decisions rather than dictating them.

According to the town’s own Complete Community Assessment report, 1,211 housing units were sitting in the development permit stream as of 2025. But Des is skeptical most of that gets built soon: “The construction industry right now is the worst it’s been in 30 years,” and Gibsons’ high taxes and cost of living make it a tougher market than most.

The same report estimates that if every eligible property in Gibsons redeveloped to its currently permitted density, the community could accommodate roughly 2,600 new homes in total, a ceiling, not a forecast.

The sanitary system, not water. Gibsons’ two aquifer licences provide enough water capacity for roughly 6,000 people. But per the Complete Community Assessment, the sanitary outfall and wastewater treatment plant are already at capacity today. The report itself names this as “the single greatest limit to increasing the housing supply.”

Upgrading that system costs serious money, at a time when provincial and federal infrastructure grants are shrinking. Des thinks Gibsons needs a direct, public conversation about what growth the town can actually afford to service, including whether there needs to be any cap on new development permits.

Des’s first move isn’t cutting, it’s efficiency: reallocating existing spending before touching services. “You don’t necessarily have to cut things. You have to just get more efficient and reallocate... if you find a situation where you can’t do that, then you do have to hit cutting.”

If council and staff can’t find that path on their own, he’s open to bringing in an independent municipal auditor, of the kind used by other B.C. towns facing similar budget pressure, to map out options. He plans to publish his own priority list later in the campaign, built from community feedback.

There are only two mayoral candidates this election: the incumbent and Des. As he puts it, “two different people, two different approaches.” The last election was won by a slate of five candidates running together; Des is not part of a slate, and describes his approach as a more open, consensus-driven reset built around the new council, not around any one person.

“I don’t really believe that one person should be able to control that agenda,” he says. “It’s really up to the people of Gibsons... I present who I am, I present my ideas.”

Des is upfront that Gibsons is tiny, about four square kilometres, and doesn’t see major local environmental issues beyond one: wildfire. He points to Gibsons’ own history (a fire that started on Flume Road in the 1900s and burned through town) and a small coastal town in Australia he once lived near that was later destroyed by fire and had to be rebuilt.

His approach is to ask residents directly what environmental issues they see within Gibsons’ own four square kilometres, rather than defaulting to global issues the town has no real lever to affect, and to spend money on what actually applies locally.

Des is genuinely enthusiastic here: “We just have incredible artists... incredibly talented musicians, way more than we should per capita.” He points to the Gibsons art gallery, the local music scene, and the growing food and drink scene as real, distinctive assets that draw people to the town.

By Des’s reading of the town’s own Schedule 5 disclosures, Gibsons spends roughly $1.7 million a year on planning and engineering consulting. He says consultants are necessary, but only worth it if their work actually gets used: the Complete Community Assessment report, for example, was commissioned and paid for, but was never incorporated into the town’s Official Community Plan.

He also flags a $75,000 grant-funded Parks Master Plan intended to tie together several existing town plans, plans that, in his view, already cover the same ground and haven’t been acted on. His point isn’t that grants are free money (“grants are taxpayer money”), it’s that new spending should be checked against what’s already been paid for and shelved.

Des thinks so, and gives a concrete example: when the Eagle View Heights towers went up, the region had no local high-angle rescue training for tower cranes, because large cranes aren’t common on the coast. Coordinating that kind of shared capacity across Gibsons, the SCRD, and Sechelt is, in his words, “a work in progress.”

There’s also a looming practical issue: if Gibsons’ population passes 5,000 at the next census, the town will start receiving an invoice from the province for 70% of local policing costs, a cost regional partners are already covering. He sees this as exactly the kind of thing that needs early, direct collaboration with neighbouring jurisdictions.

Ferries aren’t within a mayor’s jurisdiction, but Des has a personal view: given how old the fleet is, he thinks the current service works remarkably well most of the time, and that the province has already said clearly it doesn’t have money for new vessels. “I accept when someone says I have no money, they have no money.”

On the proposed electric ferry, he’s open-minded but cautious: similar aluminum electric catamarans have worked well in New Zealand, but the specific design proposed here hasn’t been built before, and he’s not yet convinced of the economics or capacity for Gibsons’ run. As he sees it, the town’s likely role would be limited to facilitating BC Hydro’s electrical infrastructure, not funding or operating the vessel itself.

Des grew up around the ocean in New Zealand: a competitive surfer at an international level by the late 1970s, then a windsurfing and surfboard manufacturer after moving to the Sea to Sky corridor. He worked as a sailing instructor and eventually became the West Coast representative for the Canadian Yachting Association, helping introduce boater licensing nationally.

He later built a manufacturing company supplying padding and safety equipment to ski resorts across North America and Europe out of his time at Whistler Blackcomb, then moved into consulting, including advising on early ski industry development in China. His construction and project management work continues today, including on projects like Eagle View Heights in Gibsons.

Hiking and biking the local trails, gardening, and reading nonfiction, particularly about where technology and AI are heading. And, unsurprisingly given his background, just being outside: “Enjoy getting out and with friends... going to the tap works or the 101 or restaurants or whatever. It’s just a great environment to chill and hang out.”