While we agree with everything else in Louise Englund's post we can't agree with charging for sterilization for these reasons:

1. A charge of any amount is discriminatory and says that those who have get and those who don't, don't. Or have to beg.

2. Why have a charge if it is too low to even pay for the paperwork? The charge ends up actually costing the clinic money.

3. On what consistent and fair basis would the $10 be waived? That policy allows favouritism and unfair decisions which leads to bad feelings and charges of bias.

4. If the message is that all pets without a license to breed should be sterilized, then by charging anything you are diluting the message.

We don't know how this would be paid for at this time. The BC SPCA has squandered its riches by decades of featherbedding. Firing 14 H.O. staff is a start, but the demands everywhere on SPCA finances are staggering. The execrable shelters come first, because if an SPCA facility is no more humane in its treatment of animals than the places it seizes them from, or even worse, the SPCA is going to come a cropper over that one day. It can't be avoided.