At least here in Canada, if you accept money to act as the "Divemaster" or leader of the activity, that puts responsibility on you to exercise due diligence in providing a safe experience for the customer according to your training and the standards in the industry, and if there is an emergency to act to the best of your ability according to your training and the standards. Anything else and you are liable. But a lot of DM's and instructors get away with terrible practices because thankfully, nothing ever went wrong yet. So they churn out equally unskilled and unsafe certified divers. I know the few of us who really try to keep our skills and training up, stay in shape (... try ), and who tell students, "why don't you come back for a couple extra sessions first?" get a lot of flack from the obese, cigarette smoking DM's and instructors.

I can def. see the point though, that was made: imagine gearing up on a boat for a dive you paid for and the DM coming over and telling you she/he doesn't think you are ready for this dive and they are not going to allow you in the water? Wow, bravo for them, but who here would just quietly accept that? So what do we do? I think stricter certification requirements is a good idea, but the unscrupulous instructors already ignore the standards we have. It's an issue too large to be policed by the training agencies ... they don't have the man power ... And putting the instructors on the honour system doesn't seem to be working ...