"In Prince George, a homeless pet dies every 4 hours. Help us prevent this daily tragedy. "

If the SPCA's statistic that a homeless animal dies every four hours is correct, that must mean that it has killed almost 2,200 animals a year, because they are the only ones killing them. Vets are not allowed to kill animals whose owners are not identified, and the tiny, struggling, real animal welfare groups don't kill homeless animals.

Like all SPCA statistics there is no way to prove the validity of this statistic, but if true, it confirms what AAS has been saying for years - that the SPCA kills a huge number of animals for no better reason than a lack of space, and because its cheap and nasty prisons make animals physically and mentally sick.

And does the SPCA even bother to count all the rabbits and other small animals it kills?

About five years ago the alternative animal welfare movement expanded hugely in the Lower Mainland and the Victoria area, and SPCA deaths started to drop. Before that, we estimate that the SPCA's 35 or more branches (most with dog catcher's contracts) killed 50,000 unwanted/unsellable pets a year. And those figures are only for dogs and cats - there will never be a tally of the hundreds of thousands of small pets that were not worthy of recording. This, we assert, was nothing more than a paying "pest-pet" disposal business. For saying so, we are being sued.

The SPCA lied about this for decades, even going so far as to say that it only killed 1% of animals. For pointing out the falsity of SPCA statistics, we are being sued.

In 2001, reacting to the crushing P.R. of Vancouver SPCA volunteers going on TV to tell the public that the SPCA was killing nice dogs to make space for more dogs, the SPCA first lied, saying that the dogs were killed for aggression, its tried and true justification. That was so patently false that it then frantically threw together a "moratorium" on killing for space.

The moratorium is so patently false that even the SPCA P.R. department is no longer claiming that it does not kill for space, we are glad to read. But it still is using the fraudulent, "We will not kill an adoptable animal", which just as effectively misleads the public into thinking that the SPCA is "no kill" as did the moratorium on killing for space. Only animals that are irredeemably ill are not adoptable. All others are adoptable with remediation measures, but that takes money and ethics and honesty and the determination to break the addiction to the unlimited surrender policy which supplies all the free animals to the SPCA.

The, "We kill no adoptable' animals" is very slick P.R. indeed. We can attest that few people understand that it allows the SPCA to kill any animal it chooses to for the same reason it always did - that the animal turned out to be unsellable, especially after being kept on display in one of its 19th century, diseased prisons for long. But now it has a "scientific test" to "prove" a dog's death was its own fault. And poor teeth can be used to say the cat had to be killed.

That is not animal welfare - it is paying pest-pet disposal. If you take a homeless, sick, or unwanted creature, you cannot call it animal welfare to keep it in a prison and kill it if it declines. And then label it "unadoptable", blaming it for its own death and exonerating yourself.

The BC SPCA seems to be inching its way, tortuously, toward some honesty and real animal welfare, which is what we have been asking of it for ten years. But it is no comfort that the SPCA has only made improvements under duress. The internet connected all the watchers and critics after decades of them all being unconnected. There is no going back now. But the road to real animal welfare is still littered with victims, both animal and the humans who dare to tell the truth.

On October 21st, AAS posters and directors who are being sued for their dedication to assuring an honest BC SPCA, are attending mediation as a result of the SPCA's bully-boy law suit against us. The SPCA refused our offer of private mediation which would have saved money and instead insists on expensive court-ordered mediation.

In 2001, when the SPCA first used the courts to threaten me, I said I would temper the AAS web site if the SPCA were honest. That has not changed. Only an honest BC SPCA will prevent cruelty to animals long after I am gone.