The City of Chilliwack pays for animal control with taxpayer money. Ms. Halligan is the BCSPCA Branch Manager in Chilliwack and Abbotsford. In Abbotsford, the SPCA had the animal control contract for decades. In Chilliwack, it has one or more animal control contracts with outlying municipalities. Just because the SPCA does not happen to have the animal control contract in Chilliwack, as it does in most of the Lower Mainland, doesn't mean the contract doesn't exist. Taxpayers pay for animal control, as Ms. Halligan is fully aware.

In addition, the BCSPCA receives support from the provincial government. Perhaps Ms. Halligan believes that residents of Chilliwack don't pay their fair share of provincial taxes?

I never suggested that purebred dogs are the problem in Chilliwack, rather, I blamed the dog breeding industry. Mixed breed pups are routinely advertised in the classifieds for $400 each. Puppies are a commodity; registration papers aren't required for large sums to pass hands. As a matter of fact, if "accidental" breeding of family pets really were the huge problem that Ms. Halligan asserts, there would be plenty of free puppies available in every neighborhood, and the for-profit breeders would be out of business. If what Ms. Halligan claims were true, her facilities would be full of puppies.

Instead of puppies, it's the difficult to sell adult dogs that populate the "shelters". When I checked the Chilliwack SPCA's list of available dogs on March 14th, only one-third of the dogs were listed as mixed breed, the others were given single breed designations. Of course, all of the available dogs were adults.

Ms. Halligan would like proof that dogs that end up in her facilities can be traced to dog breeding. Perhaps she needs a biology lesson as well.