2006

Lawsuit: Why AAS is Being Sued

Multi-million dollar BC SPCA suing tiny AAS for defamation
in BC Supreme Court
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Animal Advocates Society has been critical of the BC SPCA's policies and actions as far back as we have been able to document  (starting in the 1950s) which reveal by a pattern in their consistency that the SPCA did not do real animal welfare as it professed. Instead, it was the pet disposal agency for British Columbia. To that end, it took in hundreds of thousands of animals, and killed many of them, even if they were healthy. For trying to change that, we are being sued. The trial has been set for September 2007.

A brief history of the problems with the BC SPCA:

  • It began a dog-control/disposal contracting business in the 1950s, increasing its revenue by as much as $4-5 million per year. Animal control (the dog-catcher) exists to protect the public from dogs and other animals.  The SPCA's mandate is not to protect people from animals, but to protect animals from people.  The contracts also require the contractor to control and dispose of unwanted animals and pest animals such as feral cats, and some contracts require the contractor to kill healthy animals if paid to do so by the owner. 
  • It trained its employees in sometimes cruel methods of killing.
  • It allowed its own employees to profit from breeding and selling animals.
  • It sold unspayed/unneutered animals which could and were used by the purchasers to breed more animals.
  • Its policy was to kill all feral cats (instead of setting up feral cat assistance programs), which is no more than pest control.
  • It made media-grandstanding seizures of healthy animals, killing some of them, demanding large sums for the return of the animals to their owners, and sometimes charging decent compassionate people with cruelty instead of assisting them with their animal rescue work.
  • According to a growing body of lawyers in BC, the SPCA is misusing its powers under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The debate in the legislature in 1994 warned of the dangerous precedent in endowing any private organization with police powers bolstered by statutory immunity from damage claims.

AAS has not ever wanted the SPCA to fail. All we have ever wanted is for the SPCA to be honest, because if it were honest, real animal welfare must automatically follow.

What AAS hoped for (and continues to hope for) was the kind of real animal welfare reform that happened at the San Francisco SPCA.

The SPCA continues to choose lawsuits or threats of lawsuits for some who point that out.  AAS is aware of many instances of the SPCA using its money to start legal actions or to threaten legal actions.

AAS performs a necessary public service.

AAS is performing the most necessary animal welfare work of all when it performs the public service of telling readers that there is much at the SPCA that must be reformed.

None of us can do what the SPCA can do. That is why AAS has not ever wanted the SPCA to be destroyed. In fact, we have said repeatedly that we want the SPCA to be financially strong so that it can properly do the jobs it is mandated to do: prevent cruelty and promote animal welfare. But for us to trust that it has truly reformed its old ways, the SPCA has to be as open, accountable, and transparent as it says it is.

Just asking the SPCA to be open, accountable and transparent, and to do real animal welfare, did not work. Everyone who has ever tried has been stopped, right from the top with directors giving up for being unable to effect change, to staff fired for being too humane, to volunteers told to never come back for being too humane, to many real animal welfarists who begged for decades and were derided and ignored while the SPCA went on expanding its pet disposal business. We have proof of this going back decades. Fear of lawyers will not silence us, nor threats of personal financial ruin.

The SPCA cries poor in the media every chance it gets, but it tells no one that it is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence its tiny critics; nor will it tell its own members or anyone else what it spends on lawyers to silence critics. AAS is only one of many people and organizations that the SPCA has used the money sent to it for animal welfare to silence or suppress complainants and critics, some their own employees.  We believe that most donators to the SPCA have no idea that their money is being spent this way. (Read What Real Animal Welfare Is: 10 points)

The SPCA continues to choose lawsuits for some who point that out.

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