Rowing Canada established a Safe Sport policy in early 2022. The policy can be found here:
Rowing Canada Safe Sport Policy
For the sake of cross Canada uniformity, Rowing Canada has stated that all member organizations must adopt the Rowing Canada policy verbatim.
The Deep Cove Rowing Club has reviewed the Rowing Canada Safe Sport policy in detail. Numerous flaws and omissions were identified. Some of the issues represent significant legal risk to the club. The identified issues are sufficiently serious that the club does not believe the Rowing Canada policy can be used verbatim. We believe that it requires a significant rewrite to be suitable for our club to use. The club raised these concerns with Rowing Canada in November 2022. Our concerns were brushed off.
We are currently in the process of writing our own Safe Sport policy that tries to adhere to the spirit and desire for harmony in the Rowing Canada Safe Sport policy but corrects the identified issues. Until our own policy is ready for adoption, members of the club should assume that the club fully endorses the principles of Safe Sport, will try to follow the Rowing Canada Safe Sport policy as best we can, but there are some aspects of the Rowing Canada Safe Sport policy that are not feasible to adopt or can't be adopted exactly as worded in the policy. If you have questions about this, please contact the club's Safe Sport lead (currently Ron Westfall) at safesport@deepcoverowingclub.com.
A significant example of non-feasibility is Rule of Two. The Deep Cove Rowing Club has neither the monetary or people resources to implement Rule of Two except in limited circumstances. The Adult Masters, Adult Recreational, Youth, Learn to Row and Private Lesson programs will not adopt Rule of Two due to a lack of resources. These programs are run by a single coach during any given session. The Youth Academy will adopt Rule of Two by virtue of there being 2 - 3 coaches running the program at any particular time and a sponsor teacher from the school district is normally present whenever youth participants in the program are present.
If you believe that you have been subjected to maltreatment, do not wait until a homegrown policy has been adopted. Gather as much detailed information as possible about the incident. Submit a complaint to any director of the club that you feel comfortable approaching. The directors are listed on the club web site. If you do not feel that the club is capable of responding properly to your complaint or is not responding in a timely manner, submit the complaint to Rowing Canada's independent third party as described in the Rowing Canada Safe Sport policy.