Los Angeles Councillor, Antonio Villaraigosa, in his campaign for Mayor, touches on many of the points that AAS has made about the BC SPCA for years, and for saying which we are being sued by this $20 million a year animal control agency. Point by point....

Plan to Make LA Animal Friendly
"It has been said that how a society treats animals is a measure of how it treats people. By that standard, L.A. is in trouble on both counts. I want to see a Department of Animal Services that does everything it can every day to increase spay and neuter, increase adoption, improve conditions in its shelters and eliminate euthanasia as a major component of public policy in this city." Antonio Villaraigosa

The BC SPCA, by actively pursuing animal control contracts for municipalities (mainly dog control/disposal), at the same time that it is the agency which has the power to make and enforce animal control standards and policies, is in a conflict of interest that cannot be anything but corrupting, and in fact, this has been borne out all over North America and in over 50 years of the BC SPCA's anti-animal and mass killing policies which AAS has documented and for which AAS is being sued for publishing.

For too many years the City's Department of Animal Services has been run primarily as a law enforcement agency whose preferred solution to pet overpopulation has been euthanasia. At least 44,000 animals a year are killed in our shelters while the department perpetuates a reputation for conflict and confrontation with the humane community, precisely the people who could help it dramatically reduce the killing.

The BC SPCA kill statistics are a proven pack of lies, but a reasonable estimate, if rabbits and other small animals are included, is 100,000 to 150,000 a year. (Read just some SPCA stats: http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-stats.htm). The reason agencies like the BC SPCA use killing as a solution to pet overpopulation is because they get paid to kill, whereas working on root problem solutions costs money and would eventually put them out of business.

Instead of actively engaging humane activists to maximize animal adoptions and minimize euthanasia, the department has historically erected barriers to cooperation and collaboration. Instead of aggressively pursuing solutions, the department engages in public relations ploys like proposing to call itself a "rescue organization" to provide cover for business as usual.

The BC SPCA is actively pursuing a policy of preferring to kill animals to letting real animal welfarists and rescuers save their lives. The "Cheech Incident" is only the most public proof that this is still ongoing at this time. (Read the amazing rescue of Cheech by caring SPCA staff and volunteers, by stealing him from the SPCA: http://www.animaladvocates.com/CHEECH/Cheechs-front-page.htm). But the more mundane killing of animals that rescue groups are refused goes on all the time, under the radar of SPCA donators and the media. (See what we mean: http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/SurreyKills6dogs.htm)

It also has a policy of using its uncontrolled legal powers to intimidate and threaten small organizations that do animal welfare and rescue far more humanely and ethically than it does. (Read the shocking story of the SPCA raid on Forgotten Felines: http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/ForgottenFelines.htm

Public relations has been used by the BC SPCA for decades to cover up its real activities; to steal credit from real animal welfare groups; to defend the indefensible such as the attempted killing of Cheech; to announce fake "trendy" programs such as the Violence Link Project that implies the SPCA will foster the pets of fleeing victims of violence when all it will do is accept them as ordinary surrenders which can be killed the instant they are surrendered; to issue fake "euthanasia" statistics; to run TV ads urging people to buy pets as life-style accessories; to announce (for years) the building of state-of-the-art "shelters" which never get built; to announce (for years) a spay/neuter van that never appears; to announce (for years) First Nations "initiatives", while the rampant abuse and cruelty on reserves goes on unstopped; and to announce a Pet Shuffling van in partnership with Petcetera (a business that sells caged animals by the millions), a van that shuffles sellable cats and dogs to the Lower Mainland where there is a bigger market, leaving the less-sellable up North to be killed. These are just some of the ways the BC SPCA's P.R. department serves to perpetuate and misrepresent its businesses.

Unfortunately, the current Mayor is part of the problem. He has no plan to back his empty rhetoric on pet overpopulation and no commitment to humane policies. Shortly after taking office, he fired a respected department general manager and replaced him with a previously-fired department staffer who failed to improve department operations. He announced a "no kill" goal in September 2003, and a year-and-a-half later, no plan has been unveiled. When his hand-picked general manager resigned under fire in 2004, he masterminded a clumsy replacement process that inflamed the humane community and resulted in the hiring of a career government administrator with no previous experience on animal issues. This Mayor has lost the confidence of animal lovers in Los Angeles.

The Villaraigosa Plan
Real Accountability at the Department of Animal Services: I will demand better performance and real accountability from the Department of Animal Services and the Board of Animal Services Commissioners. It is essential that we reform and strengthen the Department of Animal Services so the department can better provide facilities, train staff, enforce laws to reduce overpopulation, meet service needs and be more customer-friendly. I will appoint knowledgeable problem-solvers to the Board of Animal Services Commissioners to provide the Department with guidance in developing and implementing humane management policies.

There is no accountability at the BC SPCA. There is no independent oversight of its activities. For decades it got away with not even producing audited financial statements as the PCA Act requires of it, until pressure on the government from critics forced it to finally comply. Now the SPCA is using its unfettered powers of seizure to enrich itself by making seizures of animals that would be better left in their surroundings and the surroundings improved and if vet attention was needed that it be done on site, creating the least distress and panic in the animals. Doing that would be real animal welfare. But seizures are media magnets. The animals the SPCA seizes this way are often healthy and being kept more humanely than the SPCA keeps them. The SPCA kills many of them, either deliberately (for not being easily sellable), or by diseases in its chronically infected facilities. Some it neglects into ill-health. It inflicts distress on every animal it seizes, sometimes critical distress, for which it ought to be prosecuted.

AAS knows of no SPCA branch-staff training in ethics, customer relations, animal behaviour, or animal health. AAS has hundreds of documented accounts of ignorant, rude, lazy, indifferent, abusive, and even cruel employees. What we know is the tip of an ugly iceberg of 50 years of animal control contracts and ruthless pet disposal business policies. And what is worse than anything a single-purpose pound has ever done, is that the BC SPCA has fraudulently taken tens of millions of dollars a year from gullible animal lovers by hiding its dog disposal contracting business and saying its unlimited surrender policy is humane when actually it is a way to get more free product than can possibly be sold, and so many, and in some places most, of the free product is killed. AAS can prove that this fraud has been perpetuated for over 50 years.

What we do know, is that branch staff are trained in cheap in-house killing by the BC SPCA's ironically-named Animal Health Manager, Dr Jamie Lawson, who, when training, uses helpless animals that are awaiting new homes but haven't been sold fast enough. We think it's unlikely that anyone would surrender a pet if they knew that it might be used for training to kill. Just to be clear - these helpless animals are dead at the end of the lesson.

Reduce Animal Over-Population: I will make the battle against animal over-population a priority.

I will hold the new general manager accountable for creating a legitimate plan to reduce euthanasia and make real progress to involve the humane community as partners with the department.

I will insist that mobile spay/neuter and adoption programs be made more available and affordable to the communities of Los Angeles.

I will call on the department to make public spay/neuter services available in its new shelters.

The BC SPCA just announced the building of a clinic in Prince George which kills as many as 15,000 animals a year. (Read "The Prince George SPCA has had to put down nearly 1,500 cats so far this year " http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/8108) If the Prince George clinic is run like the Vancouver clinic, this is not, in our opinion, about animal welfare, but we shall hope for the best and reserve judgement on it until we hear how it is really operating.

Create Animal Friendly Shelters: I will make L.A. Animal Shelters friendly to animals and people. I will insist that Animal Services make its shelters service centers for adoption and rescue referrals.

(See above comment and the photo below of an SPCA "Alcatraz for animals")

I will call on the department to adopt policies to discourage the voluntary surrender of companion animals when viable alternatives exist.

For many decades the SPCA made a virtue out of taking every surrendered animal while hiding the fact that it killed many, maybe most, of them because they weren't sellable. Never turning away a surrendered animal meant that the SPCA's pet selling business got free product, and disposing of unsellable product was cheap, even free, if the little creatures were gassed enmass and then trucked to a dump, or cheapest of all, thrown into the furnace. To explain all this killing to the public the SPCA told the media hundreds of times that it wasn't to blame, that all those "irresponsible owners" were to blame. But the SPCA fattened off those owners by providing a no cost/no guilt place to dump their pets. The immorality of an unlimited surrender policy has been written about for decades, so the SPCA can't claim ignorance of what it was doing.

I will insist that the department fully train and utilize volunteers to improve care of shelter animals and counsel the public on animal surrender and adoption issues.

Callous employees taking every struggling creature dragged through the doors of SPCAs all over BC, with no referrals to real rescue groups which compete with the SPCA for donation money, is still the norm at the BC SPCA.

I believe the best way to enhance the capacity of Animal Services is to make it a "humane community-friendly" operation that the public will want to help and support. In 2004 I sponsored the ordinance to streamline the process for donating funds and larger quantities of pet food to the Department for distribution to companion animal adopters. I will encourage the department to seek the assistance of the animal activist community to support humane activities and policies.

The BC SPCA's hostility toward and roadblocks to cooperation put in the way of real animal rescuers is endemic in BC. Real rescuers have to lie and pay to get animals that are scheduled to die out of SPCAs. Offers to take and save sick animals are constantly refused, the SPCA preferring to kill any animal hapless enough to catch a disease in one of its diseased facilities.

Build More Dog Parks: I will encourage the creation of more dog parks. As a City Councilmember, I have worked hard to make northeast L.A.'s first dog park a reality. I support the creation of more dog parks, including at least one dog beach in the L.A. area, and will ask that proposed new locations go through a community process to seek consensus on siting and design to build support.

We are not aware of the SPCA ever spending a minute or a nickel to urge more dog-friendly parks. Until the SPCA came under unremitting fire from critics who were being quoted in the press, it did not have a single dog walking program though it got hundreds of offers from volunteers a year. It also refused offers from dog trainers to make dogs more adoptable. It kept dogs locked up in tiny cells day and night until they went mad and then it killed them for being "unadoptable". Even when it grudgingly started dog walking programs, the days and times were brief and often inconvenient. We still know of no SPCA that has a dog playground, and most still keep cats in tiny cages. Just try to imagine the kind of person the SPCA hired to staff these prisons for animals. (Find out: http://www.animaladvocates.com/ron-polly-and-union-career-killers.htm )

Educate, Educate, Educate: I will push for humane education in schools and communities to teach children and adults about animals and to reduce animal cruelty.

I believe that the humane treatment of animals should be taught to children in the home and classroom. I will call on Animal Services to work with local schools to make humane education a regular part of the curriculum and to reach out to community groups, senior centers and others.

SPCA education is much more P.R. than reality. And when it does "educate" it tells children how to keep caged animals, not that it is wrong to make a "pet" out of an animal that has to be caged.

Enforce Animal Abuse Laws: I will enforce laws that discourage animal abuse and pet overpopulation. By working with the Department of Animal Services and the City Attorney, we can step up enforcement of the City's breeding ordinance and crack down on the sale of animals bred by unlicensed breeders. I will call on LAPD to form an animal abuse task force to vigorously enforce laws against dog fighting and other abuse that so often is a precursor to crimes against humans.

We will come back to this one with links to AAS's documentation that shows that SPCA bullies have been promoted and encouraged to trample everyone's right to "reasonable search and seizure"; are using frightening tactics such as gag orders and threats of killing their animals to silence and intimidate animal owners whose animals have been seized; who demand payment of huge sums of money for owners to get their animals back or they will be "disposed of". The SPCA has seized healthy animals and killed them. It has seized healthy animals - without a warrant. It has seized animals with a warrant issued on information manufactured by the SPCA Constable and had that case thrown out of court as a consequence. It issues press releases with misinformation in them. It seized healthy animals on the grounds that certain conditions "might" cause harm in the future. That is like the police arresting you because you "might" commit a crime in the future. It seizes healthy animals, inhumanely trucking them to strange places, kills them or makes them ill by its neglect, and then bills the owner hugely inflated costs for "care" and vet bills (some of which bills it does not even pay). It garners hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations by looking heroic on TV and in the other media, by seizing healthy animals and then vilifying the owners in the media, making them into monsters, then selling or killing their animals, and getting court orders for thousands of dollars from the now financially and psychologically ruined owners. In our opinion, the BC SPCA has never shown its true colours - animal users and killers - as clearly as it has when it decided to do damage control and make money by seizures. We are supported in this opinion by many vets who see the SPCA very clearly, and by various legal advisors. The BC SPCA's version of cruelty enforcement is itself cruel. Worse - it is not being watched by government and that is a dangerous thing.

A More Humane Zoo: I will demand better conditions and treatment for animals at the Los Angeles Zoo. As a member of the Los Angeles City Council I have pushed the Los Angeles Zoo to improve facilities and treatment for its elephants, and I called on management to ensure completion of bondfunded improvements on time and on budget. I understand that zoos may not be appropriate homes for certain wild animals and will work with zoo management to make those tough decisions.

For decades the BC SPCA stayed on the good side of its wealthy donors by never saying anything controversial, no matter how egregiously animals were being abused for profit. Afterall, it was itself using animals for profit and to criticize others risked the spotlight being trained on it. It never said that zoos and aquariums are inhumane because so many wealthy Vancouverites were patrons of the zoo and the aquarium. Its first word against a zoo was not until the public uproar over the way Tina the elephant was being abused by the Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove. But it ignored her well-known suffering for twenty years. Nor, until recently, under unremitting pressure, would it make any waves over other issues such as pet stores (though it still maintains its connection to PIJAC, the pet selling industry's association and to Petcetera), puppymills, chained dogs, leg-hold traps, etc. (read 100 Years of What? http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-100-years.htm)

Actively supported adoption of L.A.'s spay/neuter and breeder licensing ordinances.

L.A. has a breeder licensing law? Yet the BC SPCA has not ever promoted one. Yes, it got behind the mandatory cat sterilizing bylaws that were promoted by Vancouver Humane Society in the 1990's, but not until it looked like there was going to be some success to take credit for, and take credit it did. (Read how the SPCA took credit in the media for an amazing rescue operation by a tiny group, and took the donations that should have gone to this group: http://www.animaladvocates.com/wdw-spca-takes-credit.htm)

The cat bylaw also looked like a chance to make more money from its animal control contracts, adding cat control to its dog control contracts, by rounding up and killing cats for extra taxpayer bucks. Municipalities sniffed that out though and made the SPCA promise not to boost its contract prices. Consequently, the SPCA, the almost exclusive animal-control contractor in the Lower Mainland, never bothered to even try to enforce the bylaw. Good thing too, because the bylaw was so ill-thought out that it was going to be easily used by the SPCA to kill thousands more cats than it already did by shutting down real cat rescuers who drain away hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations a year. In fact, shortly after the bylaw was first adopted, SPCA booted thugs raided a cat rescuer and told her they could shut her down because now only the SPCA could take in stray cats. (Read here: http://www.animaladvocates.com/cat-politics.htm)

As for dogs - not only has the SPCA never asked any government for dog breeding controls (unless secretly in the last few months), but it has refused offers from FIDO and from the BC Dog Breeders Association to adopt standards so that breeders can know what causes the SPCA might seize their animals and livelihoods for. By never adopting standards the SPCA has shown that it prefers the law to be so vague that the SPCA can seize from anyone it damned well pleases on any specious grounds it can convince a kind-hearted judge to accept.

Supported Proposition F to fund construction of modern new animal shelters.

Where are the oft-touted state-of-the-art "shelters" the SPCA keeps saying it is going to build? There was supposed to be one in Penticton, in Nanaimo, in Pitt Meadows, in the Surrey area. Where is the money that was raised by those promotions?