Mondee Redman is the daughter of Burnaby City Councillor Cecile Redman (now retired). From 1995 to 1998 AAS went before all the Lower Mainland Councils, asking for Humane Treatment of Dog bylaws because the SPCA had made no, or almost no, attempt to use the PCA Act to help horribly suffering yard dogs (or indeed, to help horribly abused dogs like the one that was dragged behind its owner's truck. The owner admitted on TV to his crime; the SPCA did not have charges laid and in fact allowed the man to have his dog back).

In every municipality but Vancouver, New Westminster, West Vancouver, and Mission (which ran their own dog control), the SPCA was the contracted dog controller. It had these dog-catcher contracts in North Vancouver City and District, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Maple Ridge, Richmond, Surrey, Langley Township and Langley District, Delta, Abbotsford, and other smaller jurisdictions. (In Vancouver the City Pound was far more humane than the SPCA and actually practiced animal welfare.)

It was paid to enforce the municipality's dog control bylaws. And it did with all the appearance of relish, ticketing people for allowing their dog off-leash, ticketing people for not have a dog licence, picking up and disposing of stray dogs, and making owners muzzle their dog in response to barking dog complaints (the dogs barked because they were miserably lonely and frightened yard dogs). This, it told its donors, was "animal welfare". If that was what the SPCA said was animal welfare then, how can anyone know that what it now calls animal welfare is what is commonly understood to mean animal welfare?

On the evening that I made AAS's presentation to Burnaby Council, Cecile spoke to me in the hall at the break and told me that the SPCA was agitating behind the scenes to have Burnaby reject the Humane Treatment of Dogs bylaw.

Now why would the SPCA want to block any law that gave it the opportunity to help suffering dogs?

It's my opinion that the unionized SPCAs liked their policing, rounding-up and disposing powers (which included a lot of killing, how much killing the SPCA has never made clear) and wasn't interested in helping suffering dogs. In fact, it wasn't interested in even stopping its own terrible cruelty to dogs. That was the opinion of many ex-SPCA volunteers and even some ex-SPCA employees and directors. In all the years that the SPCA held these contracts we only heard of one employee being fired for cruelty. If they couldn't be fired for using an uncalibrated electrocution machine, think of what that cruelty must have been.

At a trial, all this will come out and we will be justified in our opinion of the SPCA.