Are Canadians fully aware of water-safety issues? Where are the knowledge gaps?
I don’t think Canadians are fully aware. As we all know, Canada has a very large amount of water all around it, as well as having the Great Lakes and a lot of large and small lakes within it. Consequently, there are a lot of water-related activities that are conducted in and around this country. My impression, based on the feedback from various media-related exercises that I’ve been involved in, is that a good proportion of the public wants to know more. They want to know where the risks are, and they want to know how to properly protect themselves. What’s lacking, clearly, is a standardisation of accreditation for courses having to do with a lot of water-related activities. The new regulations that have come into place recently for boating courses are beginning to address that issue, and are trying to establish a standard across the board where course providers for boating activities are accredited. But right now, there are so many course providers just in the boating field, and anybo
