PART TWO: GOVERNMENT’S POSITION ON THE FILE:
The BC SPCA is NOT just a private society; it is a provincial law enforcement body spending municipal and provincial tax dollars as well as donors' volunteer tax dollars. Many sources to my investigation of the BC SPCA have written letters of complaint about the Society to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, the Attorney General and/or the Premier. Below is what most complainants have received in response:

The Premier’s form letter (the MAFF responds with a similar version) reads:

Thank you for your email regarding the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA).

The BC SPCA is established by the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The Act incorporates the Society, and sets out the framework of the Society's structure and operations. The Society is not a public organization.

It is a private, non-governmental organization, and like all other private organizations, the Society and its members are free to organize the Society and conduct its operations in the way they believe best suits their needs and purposes.

I am aware that the Society has been overhauling its structure and the roles and responsibilities of its branches, and that there are differing views within the Society on those changes.

I have received a number of letters similar to yours, many of them suggesting that the provincial government should intervene in this situation and decide for the Society and its members how they should conduct their affairs. I have been advised that the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries believes that this action is not necessary, nor would it be appropriate. The Society is a private, non-governmental organization and therefore it is up to the Society and its members to resolve matters like these amongst themselves.

Thank you for taking the time to share your views and suggestions on ways to improve the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act with me.

Sincerely,
Gordon Campbell
Premier

What the Premier’s letter does NOT say is that the special status government grants the SPCA allowed the Society to change its bylaws in 2001, which stripped 32 local volunteer branch Boards of Directors of decision-making power and reduced them to Community Advisory Committees only. Additionally, members were stripped of votes on operational, financial, and governance issues. This obviously means that the SPCA membership cannot, as the Premier suggests, “resolve matters like these amongst themselves.”

If the SPCA fell under the Society Act (Sections 20 [1] and 23 [1]), the government would have had to review the BC SPCA’s proposed new constitution and bylaws to protect the membership. Because the SPCA has its own Act, the delegates were sold and/or misled, the Registrar of Companies did NOT review the proposed bylaws, and those unwitting delegates who were promised more money and decreased liability for local branches instead helped SPCA executives disenfranchise branches and members from both the Society and voting powers.

It’s fair to say that the two individuals from each SPCA branch who voted for the new bylaws either regret their vote and/or did not understand the implications when they cast it. It is also fair to say that the individual members of the Society’s 32 branches were not consulted as to their positions on the by-laws proposal.

It is circumstances such as these that the Society Act, not the PCA Act, aims to protect. Likewise, I believe the passage of by-laws that would so dramatically change the nature of the BC SPCA should have been decided by all of the Society’s members, in the light of day and with full disclosure of the ramifications such approval would initiate. But due to the draconian nature of the new SPCA bylaws, there is no going back to democracy without government intervention in the form of changed legislation. The Provincial Government either knows or ought to know this.

If the BC SPCA fell under the FOI Act, the membership, staff, the public and journalists could have requested internal documents that may have revealed the CEO’s and the Executive Committee of Management’s agenda in time to prevent the loss of democracy the Society now has. The decline in this social service and its grave fiscal situation may have been averted.

The consequences of the new bylaws have been dramatic. In January of 2003, the SPCA Board of 16 Directors revoked the memberships of three dissenting individuals (two of them award-winning volunteers, one of whom was a Life Member, and the three had a combined 45 years of volunteerism) without a vote being put to the membership. If the SPCA fell under the Society Act, the entire membership would have had to vote at an AGM to revoke those memberships. Clearly the SPCA under its new bylaws would not fulfill the Society Act requirement under Section 7 (2) that “the number of non-voting members cannot exceed the number of voting members.”

This is just one, NOT a rare, example of the fundamental loss of democracy in the BC SPCA since November 2001 when it implemented the new bylaws.