There is a lot to say about the quality of referees in CAHA. To say that in general they are not competent would be an insult to incompetent referees. I can now count 6 times this season where a player on our team was given a 2 and 10 for "head contact" that were clean legal checks on a player with the puck. There were 3 more where some head contact occurred, although none of these were intentional targeting of the head.
I've reviewed video on these as well, just to double check. Usually it's a call where one player was taller or larger than the one being hit, but I've also seen examples where it was a 100% legitimate clean check on a player along the board, even shoulder to shoulder. If there's a "boom" against the boards, a lot of these refs are calling a penalty.
Hits from behind are certainly being penalized with boarding or roughing calls, and should there be the perception of injury, I've seen calls that came minutes later after the kid was attended to, when initially the ref didn't make a call on the play. At least at the Bantam level, there are a lot of penalties being called for checking that would not be called in other locales.
I've not seen much NHL style check finishing, and certainly haven't seen a single incident where a kid was head hunting or checking a player who had passed the puck away seconds before getting blindsided. I have no problem with standards and rules that penalize players who are running around trying to drill opponents with no other objective, but from what I've seen this season, penalties on otherwise clean checks on a player with the puck have been occurring with great frequency.
There was a somewhat notorious Bantam player last year, who had a well deserved reputation for taking a predatory approach to checking. That player was suspended multiple times and missed most of the season.
I have a friend who has a kid playing midget AAA who has been penalized and threatened with suspension. As the team has video of all the games, he was able to get officials from USA hockey to review the videos, and was assured that not only were the plays not fit for suspension, but in fact by the standards and rules of USA hockey, 100% clean checks that should not have been penalized in the 1st place.
California hockey since Squirt has standards for body contact and checking that are far more protectionist than more established hockey communities. You find this out pretty quick when you go play tournaments elsewhere.