Vancouver Courier
October 29, 2001Pound foolish
By David Carrigg-Staff writer
Once a year, for five years, Douglas Hooper showed up at
Dr. Michael Dear's Richmond veterinary clinic to negotiate a new pay and benefits package.
It made sense to Hooper, then executive director of the
Vancouver regional branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to meet
the branch president privately to make his pitch for a pay hike. That's how it had been
done at the regional branch for the past 30 years.
Those meetings went well for Hooper-with Dr. Dear's sole
signature, the executive director's annual pay package soared from $77,000 in 1996 to
$204,000 this year. The executive director of the Victoria branch, the most powerful in
the province, earned a paltry $75,000 a year by comparison.
Then something happened. In January, the B.C. SPCA's
provincial office asked for information on Hooper's salary package for a society-wide
compensation review. The Vancouver regional branch refused. After further investigation,
the provincial office took control of the branch, suspended Hooper and paid a consultant
to investigate Hooper's salary negotiations as well as management of the branch's 16
animal control contracts. Around the same time, Hooper's right-hand man, field operations
manager Brian Nelson, resigned. Human resources manager Bill Taylor, who was also
suspended with pay, went on long-term sick leave after major heart surgery.
In August, Hooper was sacked. The branch's board of
directors was stripped of its powers and head office made it clear it wanted to control
all of B.C.'s 32 currently autonomous SPCA branches. Hooper insists his firing was part of
a deliberate strategy to gain control of the branches.
"They wanted an issue to help them with their plan
to get all money flowing directly to provincial office, and the one that worked for them
was my compensation and benefits package," says Hooper, who is still bitter about his
dismissal and remains unemployed.
Nonetheless, insiders say the restructuring plan will get
the go-ahead when delegates from all B.C. SPCA branches except Vancouver's- now controlled
by the provincial office-vote on it Nov. 3.
Since the scandal surrounding Hooper's firing this
summer, things have quieted down. For the past two months, the B.C. SPCA has held public
consultations to get feedback on the society's image and future, while Dr. Dear has
apologized for Hooper's "inappropriate remuneration."
But the Vancouver branch still faces a rocky future.
Volunteers have drifted away, and some of the branch's 110 unionized staff are facing
layoffs as administrative services are streamlined and municipalities like the City of
Coquitlam and District of North Vancouver abandon their long-standing animal control
contracts.
An internal debate has long raged about whether the
103-year-old organization should be in the animal control business, which can involve
large numbers of euthanizations. But the revenue loss from cancelled pound services could
be significant-although half the B.C. SPCA's branches have animal control contracts with
municipalities, Vancouver's has by far the most-16, based in 10 pounds and worth about
$2.5 million a year.
Just to add to the branch's list of miseries, Hooper is
shaping up for a wrongful dismissal suit that could cost the non-profit organization
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Barney the blind cocker spaniel, who was found abandoned
five years ago on a Surrey golf course, sits on the kitchen floor of an East Vancouver
home that's serving as an unauthorized dog and cat shelter. He's one of hundreds of beasts
that animal rights advocates throughout the Lower Mainland take in every year, knowing
their chances of survival in a crowded SPCA pound are slim-the old, the sick and the noisy
are labeled unfit for adoption and quickly euthanized.
The SPCA's Vancouver branch won most of its animal
control contracts in the early 1960s, when the society thought it could deal with stray
cats and dogs more humanely than municipalities, and raise its profile at the same time.
But animal activist Judy Stone sees Barney and the three other dogs and 17 cats at the
shelter as prime examples of why the SPCA should get out of the pound business. "A
pound legally must collect loose dogs, impound them, and dispose of them somehow. The only
way to dispose of dogs that are not returned to the owner or sold to a new owner is to
kill them," says Stone, gently petting Daphne, an aged beagle rescued 13 years ago
after being chained and beaten. "There is not endless space and money to keep the
dogs forever that no one wants. It's not rocket science. A lot of animals that could be
saved aren't being saved and that directly contradicts the SPCA's animal welfare
mission."
The SPCA Vancouver branch knows all about Stone's
hard-line opinions of the way SPCA pounds are operated. In January, Stone was threatened
by the Vancouver branch for publishing allegedly defamatory comments on a web site
promoting Animal Advocates, a loose affiliation of animal rescue and rehabilitation
groups.
That threat was withdrawn when the provincial office took
over the Vancouver regional branch in August, and Stone now feels vindicated by the
dramatic turn of events at the branch and the cancellation of SPCA pound contracts at the
City of Coquitlam and District of North Vancouver. "Other people are starting to
notice what we've been saying all along about the operation of Vancouver branch,"
said Stone, who includes Don Sigston, manager of regulatory services at the District of
North Vancouver, as one of the converted.
Sigston was instrumental in convincing the district to
abandon its SPCA animal control contract, in place since 1961. The district was paying the
Vancouver regional branch about $200,000 a year to enforce its animal bylaws as well as
shelter, adopt out or destroy unwanted animals.
The SPCA's North Vancouver pound, based in a district
building, was also used to care for animals through a separate contract between the SPCA
and the City of North Vancouver. The city has decided to keep its contract with the
unionized SPCA operation, while the district will use its own employees and volunteers to
manage stray and unwanted animals.
"The SPCA transfer animals around their shelters
according to space. We looked at the log and found at times there would be only three
animals in our shelter that actually came from the district, yet we were paying for two
thirds of the operation," said Sigston, adding the district only recently found out
the Vancouver branch was renting out the district-owned caretaker's residence to Jeff
Lawson, superintendent of the North Vancouver pound and president of Local 1622 of the
Canadian Union of Public Employees, representing Vancouver SPCA employees.
"What we plan to do is not animal control. We are
calling it animal welfare," said Sigston, who wants to work with groups like Animal
Advocates to find homes for tough-to-handle animals. "It will be a no-kill shelter,
where we don't offer veterinary euthanasia services."
The district shelter hopes to reduce the number of
unwanted animals through a proposed bylaw making spaying and neutering mandatory and
imposing controls on breeders and pet shops. When it takes over the shelter from the SPCA,
it also plans to employ an animal behaviour expert to help rehabilitate difficult dogs.
Animals in the shelter will be caged as little as possible and allowed to roam and
socialize, as they are at the San Francisco SPCA shelter.
The City of Coquitlam also plans to open its own shelter
when its contract with the Vancouver regional branch expires at year's end. That shelter
will be overseen by Barb Fellnermayr, former head of the City of Vancouver's shelter and
long-time critic of the B.C. SPCA. In a Courier article in April 2000, Fellnermayr claimed
the Vancouver branch's animal hospital was making money through over-diagnosis and
favouring more expensive procedures.
Coquitlam, which was paying the Vancouver regional branch
about $200,000 a year for its pound service, abandoned its contract because of
concerns over service standards, including slow response
to outside complaints and alleged lack of co-operation between senior SPCA staff and city
staff.
The City of Richmond is now also reviewing its contract
with SPCA, which is up at year's end.
A troubled look crosses Doug Brimacombe's face when he's
asked about the Vancouver branch's 10-year collective agreement with its workers.
Brimacombe, chief executive of the society's provincial office since 1999, has negotiated
several workplace contracts over his 25-year public administration career and has never
heard of a 10-year contract.
"Five years is a long time in British
Columbia," said Brimacombe, sitting in his third floor office in a downtown heritage
building. "This contract is a convoluted piece of work."
Brimacombe is particularly worried about a clause that
forces the branch to bid on any animal control contracts that come up. The contract was
signed by Hooper and field operations director Brian Nelson, who was employed in 1996 on
the condition his animal control business not bid on the same municipal contracts as the
Vancouver regional branch.
Hooper said the animal control clause was designed to
protect jobs and simply followed a motion by a former board of directors that the branch
aggressively pursue animal control contracts. "It was board direction to staff and we
simply included it in the contract," he said.
Brimacombe is worried that in a climate of change-with
public opinion turning against the idea of the SPCA being involved in animal control-being
locked into an agreement that may contradict new SPCA policy could prove disastrous. In
fact, the union has already threatened to file a grievance if the Vancouver branch stops
pursuing animal control contracts as the collective agreement dictates.
As a result, the provincial office has hired an outside
consultant to look at the contract, yet another cost in the bid to win control of its
branches. Consultant costs are adding up-the branch paid $30,000 for its compensation
review and another $30,000 for the BDO Dunwoody report that gave the provincial office
enough ammunition to justify-it believes-Hooper's dismissal.
More expenses is the last thing the branch needs as it
faces the possibility it may have to pay the fired executive director the two years salary
and benefits he was guaranteed in his contract if dismissed without cause-about $406,000.
Hooper wants that money, plus punitive damages for
"capricious, malicious and heavy-handed" dismissal, according to a writ filed in
B.C. Supreme Court. The provincial office has filed a statement of defense and wants
Hooper to repay an unspecified amount of money to compensate for what it believes was
Hooper's five years of overpayment.
Brimacombe, who earns $132,000 a year, said Hooper
initially refused to give the provincial office details of his compensation package for
the society's compensation review. "We tried to get Vancouver to participate, but
they wouldn't. That carried on until May, when we got the information and perceived a
problem. That's when BDO Dunwoody came in."
The 60-page BDO Dunwoody report cleared Hooper of
financial wrongdoing, but according to the provincial office, there was sufficient
justification to dismiss Hooper because the method he used to renew his contract
"breached the duties which he owed to his employer as the executive director of a
non-profit society."
Dr. Dear, a devout Jehovah Witness, resigned as board
president in the spring of 2000, after agreeing to Hooper's last contract, and in August
publicly apologized through a letter to The Vancouver Sun. Hooper's last pay hike, in
January this year, was due to an automatic cost-of-living increase negotiated into his
contract. "Sometimes when one prays, 'Thy will be done', one gets crushed," Dr
Dear wrote. "One's intentions might have been good, but one's comprehension was not.
As acting president at the time Doug Hooper, the former executive director of the SPCA's
Vancouver regional branch received his salary increases, I have to accept responsibility
for the inappropriate remuneration."
Hooper maintains Dr. Dear had the right to sign off on
his compensation package. "When he was challenged by provincial office he felt bad.
But there's no policy to say he didn't have the right to meet privately or enter into
discussions." He added he did not hand over details of his compensation package to
the provincial office because his loyalty was with his own board of directors, which has
now been suspended. "We said 'Thanks but no thanks' and they started getting
angry."
Brimacombe said if the B.C. SPCA loses the case, it will
be covered by insurance, while if Hooper loses he will have to pay legal costs for both
parties, plus any amount he was deemed to have been overcompensated.
But Hooper said with a two-week trial looming, "It's
going to be extremely expensive on both sides."
This Saturday, 92 B.C. SPCA delegates will fly or drive
to Vancouver to vote on the provincial office's centralization plan. The provincial
organization will foot the bill for travel and accommodation, as it does three times a
year for provincial meetings.
"Under the current regime that's the price of doing
business," said Brimacombe. "It's obvious the management structure is
cumbersome."
Brimacombe has traveled the province over the past two
months trying to convince the branches to support the centralization plan. He reckons he's
got the support of 26 branches and will likely win 75 per cent approval for the plan, 10
per cent more than is needed.
If provincial office doesn't win control of the branches,
Brimacombe said it may approach the provincial government to step in, since the B.C. SPCA
is governed by the provincial Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. All the infighting and
expenses seem like a whole lot of dog-doo to Stone, as she co-ordinates the rescue of
another dog the B.C. SPCA won't attend to. This one is a golden retriever, dehydrated,
unexercised and locked out on the balcony of a Vancouver apartment. A neighbour has tipped
her off, after getting nowhere with the SPCA, and Stone has negotiated with the owners to
take the dog, get it to a vet and find it a home-all at Animal Advocates' expense.
As Stone rises from the kitchen table, the dogs wag their
tails and look up longingly at her.
"I get so angry when I see the SPCA, supposedly
there for the welfare of animals, spend its time trying to make money out of pound
contracts. They do nothing to control the supply of problem dogs and right now, animal
welfare seems to be the last thing on their minds," said Stone, who supports the
provincial office's plans to control its branches. "They've got a gun to their head
and they promise there is change coming. But we've had promises made before. I won't be
convinced until we see it on the ground." |