Lies are still the SPCA's preferred defence against bad publicity: lies and hundreds of thousands of dollars given in good faith to save animals' lives being spent instead on law suits while it continues to kill sick animals "because it hasn't enough money". Another defence against bad publicity is to get rid of employees who care too much about animals and who are clashing with the SPCA's animal disposal agenda.

The Amanda Muir/Cheech incident is the most public. Amanda made the Delta SPCA the jewel in the crown of the Lower Mainland SPCAs. She wasn't able to prevent it from killing a lot of cats, but she saved almost every dog that the SPCA would normally kill (any that cost money) by appealing to the media for donations for surgery or special costs and she networked with many private dog rescuers (the ones the SPCA says publicly it works with but doesn't), to get dogs out that she knew were soon to be killed. Amanda was permitted to do this by the SPCA because her compassion made it look good and the money she raised went into its coffers instead of to pay the bills of the vets who had generously done the rescue work at half rates. She was permitted to do all this until CEO Craig Daniell installed his relative, Michelle Rodgers, as manager of the Delta SPCA. Amanda was no longer left alone to work with the rescue groups who were a thorn in the SPCA's side because of all they knew and were starting to be vocal about. Perhaps it was decided by the controllers at Head Office that Amanda was a source of leaks.

The crunch came over Cheech and Amanda. Publicity and compassion won hands down and the SPCA "controllers" lost horribly. Next to the news that the Vancouver SPCA paid its CEO $204,000 a year, Cheech was the biggest P.R. nightmare in the SPCA's history of bad P.R. And it did this to itself over so many opportunities to defuse it, because the "controlling minds" at the BC SPCA can't bear to not be in control so badly that the SPCA is now dangerously out of financial control.