Q: I have noticed that a lot of people believe that it is kind to kill "shelter" animals if they aren't rehomed quickly. They seem to accept that the problem is just too big to fix. It seems to me that the SPCA taught people that there are simply too many dogs and cats to rehome but it did not also teach through example about Spay/Neuter, and responsible pet ownership. What do you think?

A: The SPCA twisted its easy "kill" solution, the one that took so little training and provided so many jobs and paycheques, into a noble virtue. It repeated this so often that millions of people actually bought into it. Ethical solutions are complicated, require much energy and money, require people with intelligence and imagination. It is so much easier to just kill the animals, a job that a cretin can do if given a uniform and some power. At one time it even approved of the Vancouver City Pound selling dogs to UBC for research, until an SPCA Director went to the media. Even then, it tried to defend this. Only negative P.R. made the SPCA back down. It's all that has ever worked. No one that we can find has ever made the SPCA significantly change by "working with" the SPCA. The example of animal welfare the BC SPCA set can't get lower. SPCA animal welfare has improved slightly since AAS and others began to be listened to by the media and since municipalities started to dump the SPCA as its contracted dog-catcher.

Real animal welfarists do not have "unlimited surrender" policies. If they did, they'd have to kill a lot of animals too. But unlimited surrender means lots of fresh faces to sell, and "shelters" that are so full that the public's heart-strings are tugged, and lots of jobs and paycheques, and the chance to piously say, "We never turn an animal away".