Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons

Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons (CPS) is a Canadian organization of recreational boating enthusiasts which offers boating safety courses. It is organized at the national, district, and local levels, with its local chapters being called "squadrons". All CPS members serving at any level within the organization do so as unpaid volunteers. The organization was called Canadian Power Squadrons until 1985 when the name was changed to reflect the fact that CPS served sail-boaters and power-boaters equally. At the same time, the French name Escadrilles canadiennes de plaisance (ECP) – which had been used unofficially for several years – was formally adopted.^[1]

History

The first squadron of CPS was established in 1938 in Windsor, Ontario, when a small group of Canadians attended a coastal navigation course offered by the nearby Detroit Power Squadron of United States Power Squadrons (USPS). Soon afterwards, additional squadrons were formed in Sarnia, London, and Toronto.^[2] Following a hiatus during the Second World War, Canadian Power Squadrons was incorporated on 27 October 1947.^[3] Through the 1950s and 1960s, more and more squadrons were formed from coast to coast, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, including squadrons in the province of Quebec offering courses in the French language. The organization saw its heyday through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when some 12 000 Canadians enrolled in its courses every year, conducted by some 150 local squadrons across the country. CPS offered a single course open to the general public, named Piloting until 1972 and subsequently renamed Boating; and that course accounted for over two thirds of annual enrolment. All other courses were open to CPS members only. These were a series of advanced courses in seamanship, pilotage, and celestial navigation, and specialty courses in subjects such as marine weather, electronics, boat maintenance, and offshore sailing. Each course typically consisted of 18 to 25 two-hour sessions, taught on a schedule of one session per week. Members serving on national committees designed the syllabus for each course, selected the textbooks to be used, and produced a course guide that listed reading assignments and assigned review exercises. All courses were conducted in a classroom setting, and were taught by CPS members as volunteer instructors.

Present situation

In the late 1980s the organization entered a gradual decline. In part this was because people generally had less free time to devote to volunteer work and leisure pursuits. In the hope of keeping enrolment numbers up, CPS greatly simplified the content of certain courses, particularly the Boating course which was shortened so that it could be covered in only 10 to 12 sessions rather than 20.^[4] Beyond that, CPS decided to abandon the use of textbooks written by outside authors and instead produce all its own instructional materials, a move that sharply increased the amount of work it needed its volunteers to perform. The shortage of capable volunteer authors made it difficult for CPS to maintain professional standards in its instructional materials and keep those materials up to date. At the same time, a growing hierarchical structure – with a proliferation of national committees, an increase in the number of districts, and an expanded meeting schedule – meant that general overhead expenses kept rising, for despite the fact that all CPS officers and committee members are unpaid volunteers, their travel and accommodation costs are defrayed out of the organization's national budget. In addition, a growing number of side initiatives diverted its volunteers' energy and time away from the organization's core work of developing and updating course materials. In 1999, the Canadian government established the requirement that all pleasure craft operators in Canada must hold a Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC), attesting to the operator having passed an approved examination of boating competency.^[5] The minimum standard required to obtain the PCOC was set very low, requiring only three or four hours of classroom instruction, and may have fostered a general impression among the Canadian boating public that more detailed courses such as the CPS Boating course are unnecessary. CPS responded to the new Canadian government requirement by producing a short course aimed at meeting the minimal PCOC standard.^[6] However, many other course providers have entered the market and offer their own PCOC-compliant courses, offering meagre content and undercutting CPS on price. Some providers offer the PCOC examination on a challenge basis without candidates being required to take any course of study at all,^[7] and some providers offer the examination without proper invigilation, including over the Internet.^[8] At the same time, the advent of the GPS satellite navigation system has made the manual methods of coastal navigation taught in the CPS Boating course seem obsolete. CPS does offer an advanced course on the use of GPS equipment,^[9] but it is separate from the Boating course and few of those who complete the Boating course go on to take it. For all these reasons, total enrolment in CPS courses has been dropping. The Boating course has seen the largest decline, from 10 000 students in 1992 to barely 4 000 students in 2007.^{[10] [11]}

Challenges for the future

Shrinking course enrolment and stagnant membership numbers have created a financial squeeze because, although CPS instructional materials are prepared by volunteers, the organization has substantial overhead costs as a result of operating a national head office and holding several large meetings a year. At the national level, CPS has become focused on maintaining its revenue stream, which is derived from two sources: the sale of memberships, for which successful completion of the CPS Boating course is the prerequisite, and the sale of course materials prepared by its volunteer authors. To increase its revenue from the sale of memberships, CPS has taken two recent steps. In 2006 it lowered the pass mark for the Boating course examination so that a larger percentage of Boating course students would qualify to become members.^[12] Then in 2007 it started bundling one year of CPS membership with the Boating course materials and raised the price of the course accordingly, so that every student who enrolls in the Boating course is effectively required to pay the first year's membership fee, regardless of whether that student successfully completes the course and regardless of whether that student actually wants to join the organization.^[13] Meanwhile, some long-time volunteers have been alienated by the watering down of course content, the declining quality of CPS publications, and the focus on marketing and the sale of memberships, and have withdrawn from active participation. In the short term, CPS faces the challenge of maintaining its revenue stream by persuading enough members of the Canadian boating public to enroll in its courses and purchase memberships that its overhead costs can be covered. But beyond that lies the question of whether CPS ought to continue on its perpetual membership drive, or instead reorganize itself in such a way as to eliminate most of its overhead expenses, which have no direct connection to its instructional programmes.

External links

• Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons: Main website
• United States Power Squadrons: Main website
• Government of Canada: Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC)

Footnotes