NEWFOUNDLAND, Canada (20 August 2004) -- First, a caveat. Any accidental death is a tragedy, and this is not an attempt to prejudge the results of the investigation into the death of diver Adrian Fleming in Bay Bulls on Tuesday. Fleming was inspecting moorings for a boat-tour company in Bay Bulls Harbour when he died, and his death has once again brought to the fore the concerns surrounding diving work — work that provincial legislation says should be done by fully-equipped commercial divers, and the work that is actually done on an almost daily basis by divers who are neither fully equipped nor trained to the standard required by that legislation. The legislation has a host of requirements, including rules about air supply, about safety backup divers, and about the conditions divers have to work under to work safely. The problem is that meeting all of those conditions is an expensive process, and those are generally passed on in the form of a relatively high pricetag for commercial diving work. Companies with very little cash flow end up needing diving work, and faced with the big expense of commercial dive work, they choose instead to take shortcuts. It has been much cheaper to simply hire one of many recreational scuba divers to do work instead, regardless of the fact that such hires don't meet the requirements of the legislation. Diving is inherently dangerous. It involves work done under a variety of stresses, not the least of which is the fact that divers are often deep underwater, and are depending on an artificial air supply. The work is often stressful and physically demanding, and the best that anyone can do to make the procedure as safe as possible is to mitigate as many risks as possible. | | One of the ways this province's government has chosen to try and meet those risks is to put in place the strict regulations that inherently make diving more expensive. But mitigating risk goes far beyond the question of strong regulations, and that's perhaps the crux of what everyone should be asking about following this latest death — latest death, because there has already been an incident where a recreational diver died while doing work that should have been done by commercial divers. It brings to mind another area where for years this province had some of the toughest and most forward-looking legislation — the area of environmental assessment. It is a difficult and expensive process for a project to make its way through the assessment process, yet that same process can be circumvented in a moment — a project like the Windmill Bight golf course or a snowmobile bridge across the West Coast's Castor River can be simply exempted without explanation. More than anything else, it shows the gap between regulation and application, or the gap between good intentions and practical realities. Likewise, this province can have the toughest regulations possible for divers — but those regulations can be completely ineffective if there is no one actually going around the province to ensure that work is being done by licensed commercial divers. All the regulations in the world won't save a life if they aren't enforced. That's a point that has already been made too many times in this province. In fact, if it is clear to all that no one is responsible for enforcing them, the toughest regulations in the world really aren't worth the paper they are printed on. SOURCE - The Telegram |
