Editor:
The Distressed Animal Act of 2015, states “[a] person commits an offence if the person transports a living animal in a vehicle without providing adequate ventilation and protection from extreme temperature or weather conditions, causing the animal to be in distress.” At the Gibsons mall today I witnessed a dog left in a vehicle for at least 25 minutes, parked in the sun, with the windows barely down a crack. The dog was vocalizing and appeared to be in distress. It was 17C outside but on average, it’s 20 C hotter inside a vehicle. Yet when I called the non-emergency RCMP line in Sechelt they refused to come out, stating the dog wasn’t in enough distress to warrant sending an RCMP member out. Basically –– the dog would need to be near death. And we wonder why bad pet ownership persists across the Sunshine Coast. As long as animal protection laws are allowed to be blatantly broken or unenforced, animals will continue to suffer.
Maria Thompson, Gibsons
