Requiring intent is both a good and a bad thing.

The bad is that unless the accused admits to intent, it is almost impossible to prove what a person's intentions are. Latest case in point is the shooting of a puppy outside its home on Quadra Island by a hunter who had a history of anger at the puppy's owner. He is claiming it was an accident. Most people believe it was intentional, but how to prove intent? In this case, it's hoped that a judge decides that the shooting was intended to not just kill the puppy but to kill it inhumanely, in other words, to make it suffer, which indeed it did.

The good is that the BC SPCA can seize animals suffering "distress" without there being any proof of intent to cause the distress; so even if the distress is accidental or caused by ignorance, or a result of the owner being too ill to care for their animal, the SPCA can seize the animals... and have charges laid.

Wait... that's one also of the bad things about the PCA Act! The Act permits the SPCA to seize any animal in any distress at any moment in time, to have charges laid, and to kill the animals. It has done that many times. One case in point is the seizure of Gwen Wilson's rescued cats. Not only did the SPCA not have to seize Gwen's cats, it didn't have to kill any, and it didn't have to have charges laid against a dying woman, while insulting her in the media by insinuating that she was a mentally ill "hoarder". (Read about the Gwen Wilson Seizure: http://www.animaladvocates.com/seizures/wilson

The Gwen Wilson seizure is the perfect example of how a law can be misused by enforcers. The BC PCA Act was drafted and made law in 1996 by an NDP government which simply didn't believe that the Act, which the Opposition warned was giving greater police powers and less oversight to the SPCA than to other police forces, would ever be misused by the SPCA.

One MLA said this about the powers being given to the BC SPCA: "I stress that the last thing the SPCA wants to do is separate owners from their animals. They want to be able to point out to owners: "This is what you're doing wrong; you can do it better. We will help educate you." If must comes to must, then you lay charges; but that is certainly not the first thing any SPCA people I know would ever do."

Another MLA warned: "Not the least of these is the dangerous precedent in endowing any private organization, no matter how benevolent, with police powers bolstered by statutory immunity from damage claims.

We have to say that we don't hold the view that killing seized animals is "benevolent".