‘It’s a real challenge’: Lifeguard shortages spur safety concerns across Canada
When Barbara Byers, a senior research officer at the society, was asked if the shortage can be dangerous or even deadly, she said “it can be” in some cases at the beaches.
Even during pre-pandemic days, Byers said Canada didn’t have enough lifeguards working, so the challenge is now to try and staff up all the pools. Paul D’Eon, director of the Nova Scotia Lifeguard Service, said that two years of training was essentially lost for young swimmers as a result of COVID-19 restrictions that closed beaches and municipal pools.
“If we need to close some sites, we will probably pick the least dangerous and places where we have made the least rescues,” he said.Christopher Love of the Lifesaving Society of Manitoba told Global News earlier in May that the traditional recruitment demographic for the industry — young people between 16 and 23 years old — is finding itself pulled in many directions these days, and youth may not be willing to go through the amount of training needed to become a qualified lifeguard.
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