The Vancouver Sun: August 6, 2005: Canada to make security list of no-flyers:

Referring to the Liberal government Conservative leader Stephen Harper said, "They're just way behind and they substitute announcements for action."

That is what the BC SPCA started doing in November 2001 when it released its reform report, The Community Consultation Report, and right on that report's heels, the New Eyes, New Directions report. Both were full of ideas to move the BC SPCA from a 19th century impound/kill agency to a 21st century animal welfare and animal protection society.

The Community Consultation Report was honest, accurate and full of idealism. It was produced in response to the AAS web site and our refusal in February 2001 to be intimidated into silence by the SPCA's first choice of how to deal with criticism - using its money (given in good faith for the care of animals) to hire lawyers to bully and terrify the critic into silence (the SPCA's preferred modus operandi again since CEO Craig Daniell and President Mary Lou Troman took over the reins). The Community Consultation Report's major recommendation was that the SPCA get out of the dogcatching business because it is the greatest source of antagonism against the SPCA (dogcatching is anti-animal and required mass killing). AAS has many proofs that the SPCA has been virulently hated by many animal lovers for the cheap and cruel nastiness of its pounds and its callous poundkeepers. There is no way to know the financial harm that the dogcatching business has caused the SPCA, but the bottom line is that for fifty years the SPCA gained more from these contracts than it lost. But not anymore. The tide slowly began to turn in the 1970's when hundreds of women began taking the SPCA's business and donations away from it by doing real animal welfare, and public sensibilities about animals began to be revolted by the SPCA's lack of sensibilities.

The tide rose every year until finally the SPCA was losing serious money to real animal welfare groups all over BC. In the last two years the SPCA has used its unfettered legal powers to attack some of the most successful groups. And it has used its money to attack AAS.

And the CEO, Craig Daniell and the President, Mary Lou Troman, seem determined to keep the SPCA's dogcatching contracts.