Regarding the staff layoffs.

"... "We're doing the best we can with a skeleton staff," says provincial SPCA spokeswoman Lorie Chortyk.

"I guess the worst-case scenario will be that we'll have to euthanize more of the animals."

"...Chortyk says the five-year-old recovery centre, a centennial project the Victoria SPCA built with $900,000 in local donations, is a fine but unaffordable facility.

In its first four years, Wild ARC racked up a $321,000 deficit and was consuming almost half of the local SPCA's total budget. Recovery centres elsewhere in North America run almost exclusively on volunteers and shoestring budgets, notes Chortyk.

Woodland envisages Friends of Wild ARC taking over operations in a couple of years and fundraising the $280,000 yearly budget needed to run the centre with seven staff. But first the centre has to make it until then -- far from a sure thing given that it's already spent most of its 2002 budget ($120,000) and the SPCA has made no further commitment."

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Instead of fixing the possible management problems at the Arc Centre with their newly hired Regional Managers, its seems that the preferred option is to turn their backs and shed the responsibility of taking care of the animals at Centre. No longer do they wish to provide shelter or medical attention to the animals, instead it would appear they wish to put donors money into high salaries and a new fitness centre for the high powered business management team they have just hired.