Spin, not reform is what most industries practice when they are under the gun for questionable behaviour, either illegal or unethical, or both. At the best, spinning buys some time, but inevitably, the behaviour will destroy the industry unless it changes and all the P.R. spin that money can buy will not stop the process of self-destruction.

The BC SPCA chose spin over honesty in reaction to a series of self-inflicted wounds beginning in 2001 with the revelation that Vancouver SPCA CEO, Douglas Hooper, was being paid over $204,000 for running a ruthlessly efficient pet disposal business-empire. New information has just come to AAS about, among other interesting revelations, all the frantic document burning that went on at the Vancouver SPCA when that story broke.

That blew open the Society to the shocked view of a public and media that had doted on the SPCA for a hundred years. Prior to that the media and the public would not believe what the few people who saw behind the screen tried to tell them.

The SPCA uses the word "transparency" all the time in its Spin Releases, but never was it so transparent as it was when it tried to kill Cheech. A shocked media and public will never forget what they saw.