Lawsuit History

Written in 2002 - The first and second legal threats by the BC SPCA to try to silence AAS

[Read also: The SPCA Now]

The first threat - January 2001

AAS got the letter from the lawyers that we had been expecting. The SPCA had decided that our evidence of their fifty years of self-serving, deceit, and abrogation of their duty to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act was getting too much exposure through our website. For many years, AAS has been carefully collecting and documenting the evidence that the reason there is so much unchecked cruelty to animals in this province is that animal welfare costs money and animal control pays money and the BC SPCA abandoned its mandate to prevent cruelty in favour of animal control, in the form of contracts to kill excess animals, and by so frequently refusing to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. We allege that the SPCA uses sad stories of suffering animals to garner donations and that without cruelty and excess animals, the SPCA would be out of business. We believe this because we have yet to find any evidence that the SPCA is trying to put itself out of business.

AAS realized that without reform of the BC SPCA, the daily, true rescue work we were doing, on our tiny budget, and which the public thinks the SPCA is doing, would go on long after we were gone. That just wasn't good enough. The suffering we have seen for the last ten years is seared onto our minds. And in every case the SPCA knew about the dogs, often for years, and had done nothing. Not even after AAS did the hard, slogging work of getting "Humane Treatment of Dogs" bylaws passed in eleven lower mainland municipalities. The SPCA tried to prevent AAS from doing this - a job they should have done themselves if they really were trying to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. And in every municipality where AAS got these bylaws adopted, the SPCA denied them, or told people reporting abuse that they weren't enforceable. Or told them that a tree (leafless) fit our definition of shelter.

AAS did the work. AAS went to see the dogs, took the pictures and video, took witness statements and took on the dogs' rehabilitation and rehoming and vet bills, and training and fostering (sometimes years were necessary).

AAS followed every lead to prove that the SPCA had not consistently and with due diligence, enforced the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. AAS didn't just wring its hands and complain about the SPCA - it systematically got the proof.

And all the while, AAS was devoting itself to the rehabilitation of the victims the SPCA was ignoring. Like so many of the little alternative groups who have silently been doing the work of the SPCA, we paid for much of our work out of our own personal pocket.

And we never lowered our standards and we never compromised our promise to the animals in our care, no matter what it took.

AAS had the courage and the conviction to see the problem and set the goal of reform of the SPCA that would ensure real prevention of cruelty. What you see and read on our website is just a fraction of what we have seen and been told and documented. Much of our documentation is worse than anything we show.

I have been threatened by the SPCA with the loss of my home and very substantial damages.

But I knew long ago that this would be the only way to get the help for the suffering animals I saw daily.

The second threat - October 2002

The second threat was October 2002 when the law firm of Lawson Lundell was hired to intimidate Net Nation, AAS's web server, into shutting down the AAS web site. It would have worked - NetNation preferred to fold on us rather than involve itself in a legal battle - except that once again, Stone proved that since the BC SPCA said it would reform, its own actions precluded the trust in its honesty that AAS required in order to remove the material the SPCA disliked so much.

The SPCA still does not appear to understand what AAS has told it repeatedly: That AAS does not expect reform to happen quickly - the legacy of fifty years of animal control/disposal contracts (dog-catching contracts) is too entrenched in the attitudes of the employees hired to dispose of animals for paycheques while pretending to be doing animal welfare and prevention of cruelty. The legacy of misleading the public, hiding the finances, self-serving, and secrecy, may take as many as five to ten years to change.

AAS founder Judy Stone knows how hard it is to change a work culture because before founding Animal Advocates Society she founded a roofing contracting company and roofing is one of the dirtiest, most dangerous, most dishonest trades of all. Stone's experience being a roofing contractor is what allowed her to see that the SPCA had become a animal disposal contractor, and that prevention of cruelty, promoting animal welfare, humane education, and advocating for animals had been all but supplanted by its contracting business.

Stone knows that the BC SPCA must rid itself of the old guard animal-disposing employees who won't move with the times, who prefer to go on disposing of animals, and that these employees have been fighting with every trick they can find. We know that the bosses of the Vancouver SPCA's pound contracting empire signed an agreement with the SPCA's union that obliges the SPCA to bid on every pound contract available in the lower mainland for ten years. There are other legacies of those decades of pound contracting:

• employees who do not know how to investigate cruelty because they were always discouraged from investigating
• employees who breed and sell dogs and cats (some who would fit the accepted definition of puppy mill and some who surgically mutilate their pups, (officially against SPCA policy, but in fact, widespread) while being paid to dispose of (frequently by killing) unsellable animals for the SPCA.
• discouragement and surly, intimidating treatment of volunteers by these employees
• a culture of killing that led to hidden atrocities
• a requirement of hypocrisy, the need to pretend to the public that they were animal-lovers when in fact they were animal-disposers.

What AAS asked for immediately was honesty from the BC SPCA. But it has continued to misrepresent, dissemble, and mislead, and so AAS is forced by the SPCA's own choices to leave the incriminating material on our web site - because it is not possible to trust the BC SPCA when it is still making misleading announcements.

In our letter to the SPCA's latest lawyers, Lawson Lundell, we showed that the BC SPCA has been acting in bad faith since AAS said it would temper its web site if and when the SPCA reformed, and that AAS has acted in good faith.

As we have said over and over, we do not want to have to do this draining job (emotionally and financially) forever. But mostly - for the sake of the thousands of animals that we cannot personally rescue, we want an SPCA that we can trust to really prevent cruelty, really prosecute animal abusers, really promote animal welfare, really do humane education, really control puppy mills and other breeders, really advocate for tougher laws, and really do the work that its donators pay it millions a year to do.

We await the BC SPCA to be what it says it is: open, transparent, and accountable. Honest reform - and trust - is not possible without that.

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