SCRD Collusion? How Justine Gabias and Landon Dix Got a Retroactive Permit at 8653 Redrooffs Road
Transcript
8653 Redrooffs Road sits right on the water in Halfmoon Bay. Here, the rear property line meets the ocean. In December 2024, the Sunshine Coast Regional District issued a stop work order on the property. The owners were rebuilding a deck inside the protected 15-meter ocean setback. This drafted site plan shows exactly where the structure sits. The orange deck clearly crosses the red dotted line marking that 15-meter boundary.
Zoning bylaws mandate these ocean setbacks, and strict enforcement is the standard procedure. The district halted the residential project immediately. Following the stop work order, the project needed new drawings. These were submitted under the title block of Landon Dix Projects Limited, legally binding the construction to that company's design. To understand how this application was processed, you have to look at the regional governance structure.
Justine Gabias is the elected director for Area B. Landon Dix is her appointed alternate director. The official permit application names Landon Dix as both the applicant and the agent for this private property. He owns the design company, and he serves as the appointed alternate director for the district. The person seeking a retroactive bypass of the zoning bylaws is the appointed alternate official for the exact district granting that bypass.
The applicant asked for retroactive approval. Specifically, the application requested reducing the mandated 15-meter setback to just 6 meters, noting that during construction, the corners of the deck were squared off. The property sits in an area with a high concentration of recorded and unrecorded archaeological sites. Because of this, the shíshálh Nation formally requested a preliminary field reconnaissance archaeological survey and strongly recommended an assessment by a registered professional biologist.
The district's planning staff reviewed the file and recommended the permit be issued. Neither First Nations request was made a condition of approval. The permit varied the setback and nothing else. Standard environmental and archaeological safeguards were completely bypassed by the planning department for this specific retroactive application. The application moved through the system in 97 days, arriving at the Electoral Area Services Committee on June 19, 2025.
This document shows that at the committee meeting, Director Justine Gabias formally stepped away. The minutes record that she recused herself due to a conflict of interest, explicitly noting the applicant was her appointed alternate director. One week later, on June 26, the application reached the final board meeting, where the retroactive permit was officially issued. Director Gabias was present and even chaired part of this meeting.
The official record shows no second recusal when the board voted to issue it. Throughout the entire process, Landon Dix declared no interest or conflict regarding the file his own company drew. A recognized conflict of interest forced a recusal at the committee level, but that conflict vanished entirely during the final binding board vote. To see how the same SCRD department handles non-officials, we can look at the Vanderhaeghe property at 4355 Lake Road.
There are differences in scale. Her case involved fresh water, an entire house, a height increase, and the district stated she ignored their stop work orders. This court judgment details the legal reality of the outcome. The district fought her application, and the dispute dragged through the system for eight years. The physical scale of the projects differed, but the root infraction was the same. A non-conforming structure inside a water setback, evaluated by the exact same planning department.
We can compare the department's reactions to a specific architectural detail. In the Vanderhaeghe case, the SCRD formally demanded that a rear corner of the structure be squared off, and staff recommended her permit be denied. For Landon Dix's client, the applicant simply stating that the deck's corners were squared off was accepted as a justification to approve the permit. One resident faced an eight-year legal battle against the district.
The other received a fast-tracked retroactive permit, recommended by staff, and issued one week after committee. When the applicant on a retroactive permit is the area's own alternate director, who at the SCRD decided the shíshálh Nation's archaeology and biology requests would not be conditions? Director Gabias recused at committee because the applicant was her alternate. What changed a week later at the board? Why was a squared-off corner a reason to deny one resident and a detail to approve for another?
Did Landon Dix ever declare an interest on a file his own company drew? These records leave residents to ask whether the Sunshine Coast Regional District applies its zoning bylaws strictly to everyone, or if public officials operate under a different set of rules.