In 2002, Ashburner was on the Vancouver Foundation animal welfare committee while a BC SPCA Director.
From this deleted Vancouver Foundation web page http://www.vancouverfoundation.bc.ca/AboutVancouverFoundation/board.htm

SPCA directors Dr. Rob Ashburner and Marguerite Vogel, head office employee and interim regional manager Craig Naherniak, and Dr. David Fraser of the SPCA sponsored animal welfare dept. at UBC are on the Vancouver Foundation's animal welfare standing committee.

An AAS supporter had been named by a gentleman who left his estate to the Vancouver Foundation's Animal Welfare department to each year choose a worthy animal charity to be the recipient of the annual $5,000 grant that came from his estate. This person asked the Vancouver Foundation Animal Welfare Committee to award the grant for 2002 to AAS. The Committee - Ashburner, Vogel, Nahernaik, et al, refused. This was after AAS had begun publicly criticizing the SPCA. AAS was going to use the money to pay vet bills that saved animals' lives and for spay and neuter. The SPCA was killing thousands of animals a year, the sick and the healthy, and selling thousands of unspayed and unneutered animals. Would this be a conflict of interest?