Your bathing activities could also be compromised this summer with the shortage of lifeguards that is still hitting this year and in all walks of life.
• Read also: White-Headed Rescuers
While the Society of Outdoor Establishments of Quebec (Sépaq) must withdraw supervised swimming in three of its establishments in Quebec due to the lack of lifeguards, now the Pointe-Taillon National Park, in Lac-Saint-Jean , is added to this list.
“The difficulties in recruiting lifeguards, despite the efforts made, will not allow supervised swimming to be offered at Parc-National-de-la-Pointe-Taillons,” explained Simon Boivin, head of media relations for the Sepaq.
Four lifeguards would be needed to provide the seven-day service. However, Sépaq does not currently have any candidates for this sector. This is therefore what prevents supervised bathing, unless the situation changes.
Simon Boivin explained that “there would be possible possibilities of opening beaches reduced to supervised swimming”, if Sépaq manages to hire at least two lifeguards.
Same problem at the swimming pool of Camping Au jardin de mon père, in La Baie. To open their pool to its maximum capacity, Contact Nature needs a minimum of four lifeguards. With their recruiting efforts since last March, they managed to recruit three. However, this number remains insufficient, forcing them to reduce the number of bathers authorized.
“We made a request for an exemption from the building management to reduce the number of bathers at certain times of the day, certain times also during the week that the seasonal workers are there and the tourists are not there”, explained Pierre. -Luc Champagne, Deputy Managing Director for Contact Nature.
The region below the provincial average
In Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, approximately 400 people hold a certificate of either assistant lifeguard or national lifeguard. However, it is not because they hold the certification that these people choose to practice the profession this summer.
“We can see that the average per lifeguard in relation to the population in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region is 1.29, which means that we have at least one lifeguard per 1,000 people. population. While the rest of Quebec is more like two lifeguards per 1,000 of the population,” observed Raynald Hawkins, director general of the Quebec Lifesaving Society.
“Rescue, it requires taking out money, it’s a lot of weekends, weeks, a lot of training so for young people, before becoming a national rescuer, it requires a lot of sacrifices”, continued Pierre-Luc Champagne from Contact Nature.
All in all, the Société de Sauvetage du Québec explained that a person who wishes to have all the required training must complete a minimum of 96 hours of training and pay approximately $1,000. It is therefore not easy to encourage young people to take this avenue.
Being attractive, a challenge
In order to attract labour, some have revised wages upwards. This is the case for the city of Saguenay, which has been offering an hourly rate of approximately $22 per hour for approximately 3 years. The City also has enough lifeguards to open its 7 swimming pools to full capacity. Is this part of the solution?
“Contact Nature followed suit so we did not approach the City because it is still very high salaries, but we increased the salary of the rescuers by almost 20%”, continued Mr. Champagne who d We also solicited retirees to make up for the lack of manpower.
“We talked about it with our seasonal workers, unfortunately we didn’t find any, but yes we’re going to start looking, we now have a human resources director at Contact Nature and her job is to come up with ideas that come out of the box,” he added.
The challenge is on, but time is running out. If there is a reduction in supervised swimming, the risks of drowning are therefore greater.
“If there are no more lifeguards, there will be no demarcated area so will people be able to realize the deep end and the shallow end in question, will will my risk of drowning increase? It is my claim, ”explained Raynald Hawkins.
It will therefore be necessary to be vigilant this summer and also to be understanding, because certain bathing hours could be reduced as well as the number of authorized bathers.
Reference-www.journaldemontreal.com