Belmont
Contributor
Ok... not to get political here, but FQAS was dreamed up by typical Quebec politicians. Kind of like Bill 101.
It's interesting to note that no other province in Canada, whose students train in every bit as strenuous an environment as that in PQ, deemed it necessary to require that a "special" certifying agency be created to deal with their "special circumstances".
People who train in the Great Lakes, or on the East/West coasts of Canada have been through equally tough diving conditions. Low/no vis, cold water, currents, silt... you name it. All contingencies can be dealt with by simply finding a competent dive instructor in that area. Agency has nothing to do with it.
My Instructor friends who are still in La Belle Province feel the creation of the FQAS has done nothing more than make an already complicated & ponderous provincial bureaucracy even more so.
Getting off my soapbox now,
You are repeating outdated opinions that only the most backward uninformed rednecks have (You are even inciting some American rednecks on this board to parrot the same BS). You should keep your opinions to diving where they are more constructive.
Also, read more carefully what I wrote. I never implied that our training conditions are different from yours, we all live above the 45th parallel.
I said that people who received their first training in the Caribbean faced different situations when diving back home, some deaths resulted.
As far as Bill 101 goes, it's needed to protect our culture and language, we don't want to be a second Louisiana. One day people in "British" Columbia will have to speak Chinese to get a half decent job. (Californians and Floridians too with Spanish.)
