The same article was posted on a thread on facebook, and I wrote a lengthy reply to it, as I have direct experience with the trend. Here's what I said:
Well, I'm not saying this to be inflammatory, but it seems like most of the regs for high school canoe clubs are written because of the mistakes made by groups from Southern Ontario, whether it be high school clubs or Girl Guides. The guidelines for high schools, as prescribed out by OPHEA are very clear, and yet groups from Toronto can't seem to abide by them. Mandatory swim tests are mandatory, if 15 kids don't pass, you don't take them on a trip. That's what happened with the drowning in Algonquin park, and that's why we must have an adult lifeguard on every trip now. The Girl guides a few years ago had a major boondoggle on Georgian Bay, resulting in two kids dying. Major revisions to OPHEA occurred after that too. The regulatory boards are reactive, so people need to follow the existing guidelines, or get out of the game. As for ratios, they are clearly spelled out in OPHEA guidelines too, and if a high school group has 20 kids and two instructors, they are in violation. Risk management is real, and it usually involves real life situations, such as wind, weather and common sense. Unfortunately, risk management is evolving due to the reactionary nature of regulatory bodies to tragedies that never should have happened. The end result is that real risk management gets snowed under by bureaucratic attempts to prevent repeats of these uncommon and isolated occurrences. In my opinion, the answer to most risk management issues is experience, and no-one should be leading kids on a canoe trip who has not served at least five years, and at east 15 trips, under the mentorship of an experienced leader with a proven track record.
Too summarize the discussion, my main point was that the excessive regulations have come about because inexperienced trip leaders, or trip leaders with no actual risk management skills, have screwed up, and someone died as a result. Knee jerk reactions don't look at the actual cause of the death, that being the poor choices of the leader, but at things like having an adult life guard on every trip to prevent drownings. This new reg, brought about because a knucklehead took 30 kids to Algonquinn park, 15 of whom had failed the swim test, and then let them swim unsupervised. One of them who had failed the swim test drowned. The swim test is very easy, if you can't pass it, you should probably stay out of a bath tub. The regs clearly state anyone who does not pass the swim test cannot go on a canoe trip. It was a clear violation of an existing regulation that was fairly sensible. After the inquiry, the amelioration is this cursed new reg requiring an adult lifeguard on every trip.
This will probably kill our program. One of the teachers is trying to get his cert now, but it is not easy in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Our fall trips this year were cancelled because we couldn't get a lifeguard. Ridiculous, when the kids are always wearing lifejackets, we even make them wear them when swimming.
Our winter program, which I was bringing in last year, will now be quashed, because there are no regs for winter camping yet, and the new guy at the board level is a stickler for regs.
I don't hold out much hope for the survival of these programs at a school level. I have had some self righteous pricks tell me that schools shouldn't be doing this stuff anyway when Scouts is available, and that I should put my efforts into Scouts. They are usually populist conservative supporters, who think that no tax dollars should be spent on superfluous programs when the private sector offers "the same thing". I told them to take a good long suck of me arse. Our school program pulls in the majority of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, who would never enrol in a Scout program, and wouldn't even know what it was. For many of these kids, as they progress through the ranked system over four years, and assume leadership, the program is a game changer. The things they learn out there can never be replicated sitting on their arse in a classroom, and I have watched many kids grow from alienated, uninterested students into engaged and productive young adults.
I tell ya, I'm right some disgusted with humanity right now. There are many people I would like to throat punch, so it's probably a good thing I retired. Now I can make snipes like this from the sidelines and not get fired. I feel bad for the guy I groomed to take over the program, seems like since i left, they just keep piling more and more ridiculous crap on him.
Anyway, that's a view from the "inside".