Ten years ago, Sun columnist Nicholas Read asked, "Why? Why is it that during the more than three years I‘ve been writing this column, and long before that, I never heard the BC SPCA speak out about anything? While the Vancouver Humane Society was leading the charge to ban exotic-animal performances in circuses; while Mercy Volunteers for Animals was winning a fight to ban the seizure of pound animals to be used in experiments; while Meow Aid was urging city councils in Burnaby and New Westminster to pass spay/neuter legislation; while the Rainforest Reptile Refuge was at the forefront of a campaign to stop the sale of exotic animals in pet shops; while Bear Watch was filling our TV screens with the ugliness of hunting; while Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals fought the biggest battle of all – the battle on behalf of farm animals – the BC SPCA said nothing. Nothing at all." (AAS comment: And Animal Advocates Society was getting laws passed to stop the inhumanity of the chained dog’s life, and Lifeforce Foundation was getting the dreadful Stanley Park Zoo closed, and Pets in Need was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to spay and neuter pets for people who were turned away from the SPCA clinic.)

One of AAS's first web pages, published in 2000, asked, "In 100 years of "caring", to the best of our knowledge, the SPCA has never tried to control breeding of cats and dogs. Could that be because some staff and directors breed and sell animals?"

AAS has documented fifty years of the SPCA's craven avoidance of any statement of belief that is not held by the majority. It is still being careful not to upset donators and is still following trends rather than setting them. It only speaks out once it is established where public sympathies lie. Setting trends and saying what is controversial is still up to real animal welfarists who aren't collecting wages and salaries, who drive their own cars into the ground instead of being given posh new vehicles every few years, who don't even have time for lunch, much less to attend Tea at the Empress with the SPCA's glad-handing salesmen.

The SPCA is driven by critics, not by ethics. (The manager of the Kamloops SPCA, who permitted the killing of 90 cats in a three-month period, advises the SPCA's ethics committee.) Fifty years of trailing behind will eventually leave the SPCA in the dust. In our opinion, that is not good news for the animals of BC.