The SPCA Role in Animal Control
Presentation by CUPE 1622
April 28, 2003
Executive Summary
The SPCA has been involved in animal control in the lower mainland for about 30 years. Currently animal control contracts comprise a significant proportion of our funding. Municipalities own most of the shelters we operate. Increasing donations to support an enhanced enforcement of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act is an excellent goal; however it is the position of CUPE 1622 that animal control on behalf of municipalities should remain one of our primary functions because it is here that we are able to work with the public on the most basic level and satisfy the public’s demand for services from the SPCA. We do not believe this function detracts from the donor base for PCA enforcement; on the contrary we believe it enhances it.
The SPCA promotes responsible pet ownership. Municipal animal control by-laws codify responsible pet ownership. For the most part there is no conflict between these roles. Some advocates do not wish the SPCA to be responsible for enforcing by-laws which restrict where and how citizens can exercise their pets, however, when the SPCA has this role it is in a unique position to advocate on behalf of animals for expanded recreational opportunities. When we speak on behalf of those who do not speak for themselves, we must also be in a position to speak to municipal governments. A responsible pet owner exercises their pet on a daily basis in a legal manner. The SPCA will not get support advocating on behalf of owners who wish to exercise their pets when and where they like: in playgrounds, off leash, at the beach and not removing excrement. The SPCA will get support advocating for off leash areas while enforcing by-laws that protect the public from irresponsible pet owners.
The public often does not differentiate between animal rescue and animal control. Calls come to us of dogs in distress, wandering on busy streets. These are actually pound calls. Where we do not perform animal control functions we risk alienating donors by refusing these pound calls which members of the public view as animal rescues. When we are involved in providing a broad range of services we can most often do the various tasks the public asks of us; where a variety of agencies do the work we are faced with asking callers to turn elsewhere whether or not the responsible agency has the manpower and time to do the job.
We must cite our work with wildlife as an example here. Our call load is huge in regard to baby birds, injured wildlife, raccoons and other animals. Although these animals are not our legislated responsibility, we do not turn our backs on them. At the request of the public we pick up and transport wildlife to rescue facilities which cannot afford to have their own pick up services and which are not well known to the public.
During most of the last three decades the SPCA has been the primary animal control agency in the lower mainland. The public turns to us for help. At night our NEP is the only resource the public, police and emergency agencies can turn to for animal problems. Where municipalities have not engaged the SPCA in animal control functions, they have no direct emergency response to animal related situations. We are the only ones who do the job. We currently do not provide animal control services in Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Port Moody, and New Westminster. Of these, only Vancouver has animal control staff on at night and they have no emergency line, only a message machine.
If municipalities do not contract animal control services to the SPCA they have two options: municipal animal shelters or private contractors. Neither of these are as beneficial to animals as SPCA-run shelters but private operators are indeed the worse of the two options.
The SPCA initially undertook animal control functions in municipalities because private contractors had no incentive to work for the benefit of animals. Their incentive was the profit motive. Where by-laws stipulate the housing of dogs for a period of time, the dogs were housed for that period of time, no longer. There was no shelter provided for cats, birds, rabbits and the other animals that we care for. As we know, there is no profit in housing dogs for adoption, so in the bad old days dogs were euthanized as soon as their time was up. We do not want to go back there.
Municipal shelters can be mandated by the municipality to house animals as the SPCA does, to adopt out animals as the SPCA does and care for animals as the SPCA does. They may even have the budget to improve on our standards. But even if every municipality in the lower mainland had the budget and the will to make housing homeless animals a priority, we would have up to a dozen individual municipal shelters instead of a coordinated network. Overcrowded shelters would not be able to transfer animals to other shelters without special arrangements (which municipalities would be willing to house animals from other municipalities at their own cost?) Someone who has been identified as an unsuitable owner could go from one municipality to another looking for a guard dog and staff would have no network to warn other shelters. This would result in a patchwork of service levels where one municipality might have a nice, well-staffed shelter housing all kinds of animals but across the border animals are overcrowded and can’t be transferred out. We have seen exactly this situation since the District of North Vancouver took over animal control services from the SPCA. That shelter used to be able to absorb a significant number of animals from SPCA shelters. Now their kennels may stand empty if there are no District animals needing them even as Surrey crowds two dogs to a kennel.
Often municipalities will enact by-laws to specify no tethering, housing requirements or other animal welfare issues. These can provide good ammunition for the animal cruelty investigator’s arsenal. If the SPCA is the animal control agency, we have the advantage on each cruelty investigation of issuing a Municipal Ticket Infraction (MTI) for violations that fall short of requiring prosecution under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act. A ticket can quickly result in relief to an animal that the evidence-gathering, statement-taking time-consuming procedures of a PCA prosecution cannot.
More serious cases that we, as by-law officers, come across can be handled quickly and efficiently because our investigators are also Special Provincial Constables and are able to obtain warrants, seize animals and lay charges under the PCA Act and Criminal Code of Canada unlike most by-law officers. Thus we avoid jurisdictional disputes and move quickly to the professional investigations needed for serious offences.
However when the SPCA is not the animal control agency, we find that many complaints are placed to both the SPCA and the municipal animal control agency. As a result, withdrawing from animal control contracts will not proportionally reduce the number of calls we must respond to. As an example the number of cruelty investigations in Vancouver is much higher than on a per capita basis than in other municipalities. The reason for this is that the same type of calls are handled as barking complaints or other pound complaints in the other municipalities. When we cannot resolve these complaints to the complainant’s satisfaction because the complaints are really pound matters we end up appearing at best inefficient, at worst uncaring. Thus by severing ourselves from animal control we initiate a demand for a duplication of services and set ourselves up to appear unable to do our job (as the public defines it).
In summary, the SPCA should not withdraw from providing animal control services because:
Enforcing bylaws is not in conflict with our policy of promoting responsible pet ownership;
Ceasing animal control will result in our refusing a higher proportion of service requests, alienating our donor public;
The SPCA has built, over the last 30 years, the reputation of being the sole animal welfare agency which is always available;
Alternative animal control models will result in more animals being euthanized;
Alternative animal control models will result in a patchwork of service levels to provide for animal welfare needs;
Withdrawal from animal control will result in a duplication of service calls without funding from municipal tax bases and a higher proportion of dissatisfied callers.