August 18, 2026

In this and in the last edition of Boating Industry Canada News Week Digest, we shared the news that the NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) has appointed Ken Harrison as their Ambassador to Canada. (The story is repeated below). The NMEA has a goal of raising awareness of the NMEA standards and of their training and education resources to our marine industry and laterally, to the Canadian boating public.

This is very good and should prove to be quite valuable to the industry, but I recently received a press release that the Massachusetts Marine Trades Association Workforce Solutions Amendment had passed in the 2026/2027 Massachusetts State Budget. This provides $150,000 in funding for workforce development and career technical education initiatives within the recreational boating industry for Massachusetts. I admit that I’m envious of the government support the Marine Industry is getting in Massachusetts.

Here in Canada, our marine trades associations are working very hard to support education and career development in our industry. At Boating Ontario for example, the association has created a number of ways to raise funds to support students and marine training, but I don’t think we are getting government support at the level Massachusetts is.

In the course of digging into this story a bit deeper, I learned that if you added up the business in the Great Lakes region on both the Canadian and American sides, with our vast waterways and traditional shipping industry, this area would have the third largest annual GDP in the world. I find that incredible.

The marine industry really counts as a huge industry and while we tend to focus on recreational boating, perhaps we should open our thinking to embrace commercial as well. In my recent interview with Ken Harrison, I learned that Georgian College has a whole program for the commercial shipping side and I’m both amazed and embarrassed that I was not aware of it.

Maybe our government is putting in significant support for marine but again, I am not aware of it.

Do our young people realize there are two sides to the marine industry, and that there are excellent careers available to those who are interested in gaining that education?

I plan to make a point of learning more about the opportunities and what is really out there. The idea of having an NMEA Ambassador in Canada, when so many of the engines, electronics and systems are all running on NMEA technologies, makes perfect sense and by painting the bigger picture to our young people, I suspect we would attract far more interest in our industry.

Andy Adams – Editor