Animal Advocates of B.C.
A COOPERATIVE OF ANIMAL-LOVERS AND ACTION-TAKERS

THE FIRST LEGAL THREAT BY THE BC SPCA TO TRY TO SILENCE AAS

On January 9, 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 web mag.  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 long ago 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 line their own pockets 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 on 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 "Definition of Neglect" 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 statements and took on the dogs' rehabilitation and rehoming and vet bills, and training and fostering (sometimes years were necessary), if someone removed the dog from its misery.  

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 in our web mag is just a fraction of what we have seen and been told and documented.  Much of our documentation is worse than anything we show.

We have been threatened with the loss of our home and very substantial damages.

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

Unlike some groups who have aligned themselves with the SPCA, AAS stood alone.  If you can help us now we would be so grateful. 

Judy Stone

To see some of our proof of the SPCA's perfidy,    click here

AAS's letter of response to the SPCA's threats to muzzle us: Instead of backing down,
we defied the SPCA's threat and posted the proof (below)  of their cruelty and dishonesty.  

March 13, 2001

 Mr Rees Brock, Q.C.
Owen Bird,
Barristers and Solicitors
Bentall Centre,
Vancouver, BC

 Mr Brock:

 Here in part is my answer to the SPCA's intention to sue me for defamation.  I am slow to respond for several reasons:

1.      I work seven days a week doing the work that the public thinks the SPCA is doing;

2.      The amount of documentation I have is huge and requires a lot of sorting and organizing;

3.      85% of my time is spent on hands-on rehabilitation of dogs;

4.      I am being given more statements of SPCA fraud on an almost daily basis.

The number of statements, the willing witnesses, the amount of video of suffering dogs the SPCA claimed (fraudulently) they couldn't help, the number of taped phone calls from people describing severe neglect and abuse and how the SPCA rudely brushed them off, more financial information, more official documents, more ex-employees and directors, all is huge, growing daily, and covers five decades of SPCA avoidance of the PCA act.  We believe that all our evidence of SPCA avoidance of enforcement is proof that SPCA written policy and SPCA actions are contradictory and that it is actions that tell the truth.

Animal Advocates Society is being threatened with being sued by your client, the BC SPCA, for defamation because in our  web mag we allege that the BC SPCA deliberately avoids animal welfare, (costs money) in favour of animal control (pays money).  And that it has for decades avoided its obligation to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.  And that it fools the public by not admitting to all its pound contracts which are contractual obligations to collect and dispose of stray dogs, and dogs that are not claimed can be disposed of in two ways: selling or killing, and that it has been killing a lot of animals for many years, for contract  money. And that it spends almost every cent on itself.  And that though it claims to prefer education to enforcement, it spends less than 2% on education.   And though it claims to concentrate on spay and neuter programs, it spends almost nothing on these programs and it allows its own employees to breed and sell, and that  is called feeding your  own industry; day job pays to kill excess animals, side job pays to breed more. And that every year it sells more intact dogs and cats, even purebreds, which are then used to breed more dogs and cats. 

 We allege a great deal more, and for three years I have been carefully and systematically investigating, documenting in statements, video and tape, and collecting the evidence that the SPCA is self-serving not animal-serving.

 What is in the web mag is just a tiny portion of the evidence I have.

A lawyer has written an opinion that the SPCA can relieve suffering under the act, but that when they say that the law doesn't allow them to act it is because they have chosen not to. 

And we allege that when AAS got a humane "Definition of Neglect" included in the animal control bylaws in 11 Lower Mainland municipalities beginning in 1995, the SPCA did not once use the definition to help relieve any instance of clear infractions of the bylaw they were being paid to enforce and what's more they tried to stop  us from getting these bylaws adopted.   And that when we took the bylaws to the provincial government for inclusion in the PCA Act (because the SPCA told thousands of people a year that the laws of neglect were inadequate for them to help a suffering animal until it was dead or near death), it was the SPCA that stopped the inclusion.  And the SPCA lied to AAS about trying to improve the PCA act.  The letters from government Minister Corky Evans proving this are in our web mag.

We are shortly getting a transcript of the prosecution of the owners of the dead and dying cows in Aggazis that will prove that the SPCA knew about the condition of those cows for at least a year before they video-taped them and garnered huge sums in donations by giving the tape to BCTV, thereby almost making the video inadmissible as evidence. We know that the RCMP urged the SPCA to take action long before.  The stories of dying cows and horses we've been told, some from the Horse Protection Society that go back decades, are legion.

 We have a statement from a Vancouver Police officer who had a dog removed from a man who beat it, provided two civilian witnesses as well as himself, only to have the SPCA return  the dog to the abuser (while collecting payment). He rescued it again and this time made sure the SPCA was left out.

We have talked to a vet who offered free spay and neuter to an SPCA and was turned down. 

 We are documenting puppy mills so awful that it makes your hair stand on end, one of which the SPCA admits (on tape) to knowing of since 1956, and that when the Chilliwack SPCA seized dogs from a Chilliwack puppy mill (again garnering big donations though media exposure) that they did so because the knowledge of this puppy mill was in the public domain (Global TV exposed it the year before) and that to continue to ignore it was damaging to their public image.  And that the SPCA won't tell us how they were able to seize these dogs, but have said for years that they have not the authority to seize dogs from puppy mills that are much worse.

 From a document re the SPCA's insistence on using machines called eloctrothanators to kill dogs. (I have all the reports and letters.)  Here is an excerpt...

 ...'the report from Clint Davy, a director of the Vancouver Regional SPCA, who was voted off the board of the Vancouver SPCA for being too humane (along with five other directors who only asked that the Vancouver SPCA stop using the electrothanator and the gas box), and a UBC engineer, describes how every electrothanator in all Vancouver Regional shelters was haywired and uncalibrated and how none of the staff were trained it its proper use; how the dogs burned because of improper use of the electrodes; how instead of using the rear-leg electrode which draws the current from the ears to the back leg thus going through the heart and resulting in a quick death, the employees made the dogs stand in water, often resulting in the current going from the ears through the front legs, not killing the dog, and so that the procedure had to be repeated sometimes five to six times.  Davy also reports incidents of terrified and injured dogs being forcefully dragged into the machines which stank of burned hair and the feces of terrified dying dogs.'

 We also have a signed statement from an ex-employee of the Vancouver SPCA clinic.  This is an excerpt from that employee's statement...

  ..."One incident I recall was about a female dog who came in for spaying. She was supposed to recover in a kennel up front where people could watch her and make sure she didn't lick her stitches etc. She was a barker and annoyed the person on duty, so they put her way in the back in a concrete run alone. They obviously forgot about her, so it wasn't until later that night when I got an urgent phone call from a worker to come to the hospital right away, as there was a dog who would not get up off the floor. When I arrived, I discovered that her entire spay incision had opened up, the blood had dried and was stuck to the floor so she couldn't move, and her insides were hanging out. Amazingly she licked my hand, wagged her tail, and gave me a pleading look with her eyes to help. I phoned the vet and asked him to come down and stitch this poor dog back together again, since I could see she was ok otherwise. The vet refused, gave a short laugh and said "tell the dog I'm sorry", and told me to euthanize her on the spot. Grudgingly, I did as I was told. It was really sad."

We have systematically investigated and documented all aspects of the SPCA's real agenda.  We have connected all the dots.   We have shown that the SPCA's avoidance of enforcement of the act it was created to enforce is actual policy, albeit unwritten.  The proof of policy is in the weight of evidence and in the number of years of unvarying behaviour.  That is why I have collected historical as well as current proof.  

I wish to add to the above that , like thousands of women, I have spent thousands of my own money to do the work the public pays the SPCA to do.  I have re-mortgaged my house for $30,000 to pay AAS bills, paid thousands more in the past, have had my house, garden and two cars destroyed by sheltering dogs and cats.  The SPCA gets the money and the little organizations do the work and pay the bills.  The SPCA hospital has been telling low-income people to get the money from all the other little societies who painstakingly raise funds with garage and bake sales, to pay for their spay/neuter or their sick or injured animal.  Some women have been doing this for 40 years. I absolutely believe that the SPCA defrauds the public.  Especially when it writes and says that it doesn't get a  penny of government money (or the more careful, our humane work doesn't get a penny of government money, which begs the question, What humane work?).  But all the SPCA's words are made lies by their actions.

What I have said from the beginning is that I don't wish to destroy the SPCA, just  reform it, just as Carol Darby, one of the Vancouver Regional SPCA directors who was voted off the board for trying to improve the way dogs and cats were killed by the SPCA, said seventeen years ago.  But Carol gave up when that board's one shot at reforming the SPCA failed.  She and they didn't know that the only way to prove the SPCA's actions are deliberate policy was to systematically get the evidence.

 We have much more evidence of deliberate avoidance of preventing cruelty and self-serving.  The videos of suffering animals that the SPCA didn't help, and the voice-over of people begging us to help animals the SPCA won't help, are convincing enough alone to show that something is wrong.  

TWO ATTEMPTS BY THE BC SPCA TO MUZZLE AA click here for the second attempt