Which agency should seize and destroy Irene Walton's Jaxx?

The BC SPCA wears three hats: one for animal welfare, one for animal protection, and one for animal control and disposal. The SPCA is widely held in suspicion and even hatred by many animal lovers for the third job, the paid dogcatcher's job. It is a ruthless, cruel job, that can only be mitigated by dedicated volunteers and every penny spent on saving lives, not destroying lives. Then a pound can attract a better class of animal worker. But if the job is run by the bottom line, volunteers are disgusted and angered by the type of employee who will do the job and they leave or turn on the agency. That describes the BC SPCA's dogcatching business empire.

There is little more respect for the way it does the first and second jobs too. In fact, the SPCA's reputation is pretty black for its animal welfare policies, such as the one that permitted the killing of 90 cats in May for possible infections, and for insisting on killing the dog Cheech on the strength of a spurious test, and for the policy of seizing healthy animals under the PCA Act and then returning them on payment, in a sickened state. The SPCA cranks up the P.R. but still its reputation declines as more and more people form groups to do real animal welfare. The difference between the SPCA and all the other groups is so glaring that the public and its donations is turning away from the SPCA and turning to the other groups in a tidal wave. All the flashy P.R. in the world is not going to stop this process as long as the SPCA acts like a controller rather than a saver. Dogcatching contracts are anathema to animal lovers. Yet the CEO (and his supporters on the Board of Directors) is actively pursuing them. What hope is there for the SPCA?

AAS said ten years ago that taxpayers, not animal loving donators, must pay for the control of dogs and cats in their communities. That way there is some chance of programs that attack root causes of animal abandonment and pet overpopulation, when taxpayers see how much it costs to ignore these problems. But if one's job depends on the problem never being fixed, there will be no programs to eliminate the jobs. For saying that we want to know what the BC SPCA is doing to out itself out of business, the BC SPCA is suing AAS.