British Columbia and the Rules on Dogs in Bars

If you have ever travelled across Canada with a dog, you will know the strange feeling of being turned away at a door for a reason nobody can quite explain. In British Columbia that feeling has a particularly odd shape. There is exactly one taproom in the entire province where your dog is legally welcome to sit beside you indoors. Every other bar, taproom and brewery in BC has to turn the same dog away. Same province, same law, opposite answer.

That one taproom is Unleashed Brewing Co. in Kelowna. It was built around dogs from the very start, a no-kitchen brewery that serves beer, bone broth for the dogs, and not a great deal else. In 2022 it began letting dogs inside on a temporary trial licence from Interior Health, becoming the first brewery in the province where you could legally drink indoors with your dog at your feet.

The fight to keep one door open

In January 2023 Interior Health gave notice that the trial would end. The brewery was, in its own word, blindsided. Rather than accept it, the team went public. They launched a petition, the local media picked it up, and thousands of people signed. Within weeks Interior Health reversed its decision.

Kevin Touchet, the authority's manager of environmental health, explained the reversal plainly: "Interior Health has consulted with the Ministry of Health Food Safety staff and determined that dogs will continue to be allowed at Unleashed, with conditions to ensure the health and safety of patrons and staff." Those conditions are sensible and light. Dogs stay leashed and on the floor, healthy and vaccinated, away from the small area where snacks are handled, and a separate part of the room is kept dog-free for anyone who would rather not share their pint with a labrador. Three years on, dogs and their owners are still drinking together there, and not a single incident has been recorded.

The brewery named after a dog that cannot come in

Now travel a few hours to the Lower Mainland. Yellow Dog Brewing once welcomed dogs into its tasting room too. Then a single complaint reached Fraser Health, and that was the end of it. The brewery is named after owner Mike Coghill's golden retriever, Chase. Under the ruling, Chase is no longer allowed to set paw inside the brewery that carries his name. The reason Coghill was given was that dogs count as "allergens."

Same province. Same regulation. One health authority looked at a dog in a beer hall and saw nothing worth worrying about. The other looked at the same thing and saw a hazard. If a dog can safely be welcomed in a Kelowna taproom, why not one in Vancouver? That single question is what the whole debate comes down to.

A rule written for kitchens

The answer is not science. It is paperwork. Under BC's Food Premises Regulation, breweries and taprooms are classed as "food premises" because they make and sell beer, even when they have no kitchen and prepare no food at all. Section 25 of that regulation bans live animals from food premises. But the very same section contains a clause that lets a health officer permit any animal they decide poses no health hazard. Interior Health read that clause and said yes. Fraser Health read the identical clause and said no.

The rule exists for good reason inside a working kitchen, where raw meat and open preparation surfaces create real contamination risk. Nobody is arguing with that. But beer is about as hostile to germs as anything you can drink. It is acidic, hopped, fermented and alcoholic. A taproom that pours sealed kegs and sells packaged snacks has no kitchen and no preparation surface for a dog to contaminate. The regulation is policing a category, not an actual risk.

Not a radical idea, an overdue one

None of this is untested. Ontario changed its rules so that dogs are allowed inside no-kitchen venues serving only low-risk or pre-packaged food, and taprooms across the province now run dogs indoors without any trouble. In Alberta, Cold Garden in Calgary has welcomed dogs inside for the better part of a decade. The model is proven, legal and ordinary in other parts of the country. BC is the outlier, sitting on a precedent it created itself and quietly refusing to repeat it.

The part bar owners should read twice

For anyone who runs a bar, a taproom, or a hotel with a bar, the numbers are hard to ignore. There are 7.2 million dogs in Canada, and their owners increasingly decide where to spend based on where the dog is welcome. Figures from OpenTable show diners choosing dog-friendly restaurants in Canada rose 34 per cent in a single year, and the number of dog-friendly restaurants climbed 39 per cent to meet the demand. Sixty-two per cent of Canadian dog owners say the hardest part of going out is finding somewhere their dog is welcome, and 57 per cent say they would go out more often if it were easier.

The venues that let dogs in rarely regret it. When people sit down with their dog they tend to stay around 20 per cent longer, and longer stays mean bigger rounds. In the UK, where dogs in pubs is simply normal, 98 per cent of dog-friendly pubs say it improved their business. This is not a niche favour for a handful of enthusiasts. It is a large, loyal and fast-growing group of customers, and right now most of British Columbia is showing them the door.

One signature away

The fix does not need a new law, money, or a single new inspector. It needs one amendment to the guidance on section 25, turning the Unleashed exception into the standard for every no-kitchen taproom in the province. Josie Osborne, BC's Minister of Health, holds the pen. Her own profile describes her as a dog walker.

That is why we launched Let Dogs In, a campaign to welcome dogs into Canada's bars and taprooms the safe and sensible way. We are not asking anyone to weaken food safety. We are asking British Columbia to apply it honestly, and to give the rest of the province the same answer Kelowna already has. BC answered this question once. It is time to give the same answer everywhere.

If you support change in Canada, please sign the LET DOGS IN Petition.