Animal Advocates Watchdog

SPCA Director claims the BCSPCA doesn't "get any government funds at all"

Gourmet dinner for SPCA
By Andrew Bennett - Rossland News http://www.bclocalnews.com/kootenay_rockies/trailrosslandnews/news/119009899.html
Published: March 31, 2011 12:00 PM

A delectable dinner will be served at the Gypsy at Red on Saturday evening, April 9, to raise badly needed funds for the SPCA shelter in Trail.

“It’s held together with duct tape,” Sue Wrigley said wryly about the shelter. “The BCSPCA is completely funded by private donations, we don’t get any government funds at all.”

Wrigley lives in Rossland and is a volunteer at the shelter, but she is also the regional director on the BCSPCA board for the Interior East region (Cranbrook, Nelson, Trail) and a member of the Trail shelter’s community council, a fundraising and advocacy branch of the shelter.

The BCSPCA is legally required to provide the services necessary to enforce the provincial Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, but receives no monetary support beyond in-kind government donations such as some buildings, land, and lower lease rates.

AAS comment: Sue Wrigley is a BCSPCA Director so it is alarming that, if she has been quoted correctly, she doesn't know that the BCSPCA receives $3,473,556.00 in revenue from governments. If she wasn't given a copy of the latest SPCA Financial information (2009) then she could have gone online to Canadian Revenue Agency's BCSPCA pages as I did (link at bottom), where she would have seen that the BCSPCA's revenues included $80,046.00 from the Federal government, $250,000 from Provincial governments, and $3,473,556.00 from Municipal/Regional governments (for dog catching/disposal contracts which require it to kill dogs that may be a public danger).

“We’re just trying to meet the budget,” Wrigley said. “We break even, barely, but there are plumbing problems, exhaust problems, roof problems. We just want to spruce the place up. Everything helps.”

Many may know the shelter from when their pet was deposited there by a bylaw officer, but this dual role as the pound “is not a normal thing for the SPCA to do,” Wrigley said. In Trail, however, the shelter has contracts with the cities of Trail, Rossland, Montrose, and Fruitvale. “It brings us in some extra money,” she explained.

AAS comment: '"... this dual role as the pound “is not a normal thing for the SPCA to do,” Wrigley said.' Untrue, but it's not possible to know how untrue by asking the SPCA how many animal disposal,/public protection pound contracts it still has because it has never answered. At one time it was the largest dog catcher contractor in BC. In fact, at one time it may have had as many as one hundred contracts. They brought in millions of dollars a year for many decades. They required the mass euthanasia of possibly as many as a million pets. Those contracts explain why so many people dislike the BCSPCA.

The primary function of the shelter is to take in abandoned animals and put them up for adoption following a number of humane but costly policies.

First, every animal that comes through the door must be spayed or neutered. Secondly, the shelter keeps the animals until they’re adopted. No animal is euthanized unless severe behaviour or health issues prevent adoption.

AAS comment: That is untrue, as hundreds of SPCA volunteers who have quit in anger and despair can attest. The SPCA has killed countless animals only because it has too many of them to sell them all. It kills old dogs, sick dogs, little dogs, countless cats and small animals and horses and cattle. The SPCA admitted it would have killed the sled dogs using the excuse that they are "unadoptable", the same cover-all excuse that Director Wrigley gives. An outraged world made a lie of the statement that sled dogs aren't adoptable. Yet it has worked for the SPCA for so long to say it only kills unadoptable animals, a falsity which the media repeats for it ad nauseum that Director Wrigley continues to feel free to say it. For recent examples see Titan, Oreo, Tyson and Munchkin at http://www.animaladvocates.com and http://www.animaladvocates.com/top-stories/56reasons.php for the 56 things the SPCA said makes an animal "unadoptable".

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