How can they even say this? (see in red) It goes against everything a humane organization is supposed to be for. Donna

Prohibition on the ownership of animals
Under the Act, causing distress is considered acceptable if the activity causing distress is carried on in accordance with reasonable and generally accepted practices of animal management. Investigators make use Codes of Practice and the expert opinion of veterinarians to determine whether the activity falls within an accepted practice of animal management.

The SPCA is caught between its two mandates. The PCA Act was created to police animal abuse (the legal offence in the Act is to permit "distress"). The Act has to exempt "normal" farming practices from the definition of distress because if it said meat had to be raised 'humanely', animal-lovers could use court challenges that could result in meat-production standards that would price BC producers out of the market. That is the same reason parliament can't agree on Bill C-50 - - Canadian meat-producers could be priced out of the market by this Bill, and Bill C-50 would definitely be used by animal activists to stop trapping, hunting, and affordable meat-production.

The politicians in Victoria at the time the PCA Act was created (1895) followed the British model and told the founders of the SPCA that they would have to raise the money to enforce animal law instead of government paying for animal law enforcement as it does with the police and the courts. So the charitable Society was created within the statute (the PCA Act) to raise the money to enforce the statute. And that is where it all went haywire because to raise the money the SPCA had to get donations from animal lovers.

Yet, while appealing to animal lovers for donations, there were a lot of things it couldn't say were cruel - things that real animal welfarists believe - or ought to believe - are very cruel, because the SPCA is statute-controlled and the statute exempts most things that animal lovers think are cruel. Just this week I was told by two SPCA constables that it is not cruel for a dog to be kept in a garage for 22-23 hours a day. There is nothing in the statute that makes that illegal and so the SPCA says it is not cruel and yet the SPCA's donators all think it is cruel. It is the clear contradiction between the two faces of the SPCA - law enforcement and animal welfare - that puzzles and angers the public and is at the centre of the P.R. storm the SPCA is in and in some large part, is the reason for the SPCA's loss of donations. People are dismayed and angered by the discovery of the two puzzling faces of the SPCA. This anger and dismay has been expressed to AAS on a daily basis for ten years.

This fatal dichotomy was created within the very foundation of the BC SPCA. There may be no way to make it right except to divide animal welfare and cruelty prevention between two bodies. The SPCA may see this and it may even want to concentrate purely on cruelty prevention and let other groups do the animal welfare. But as the SPCA's President, Mary Lou Troman, pointed out, the SPCA doesn't get any money where it doesn't have a branch that appears to be doing animal welfare and the SPCA can't afford to enforce the PCA Act without the money that 'shelters' attract.

No one agency could do all the animal welfare and sheltering the SPCA claimed to do for many decades. Chronic, long-term failure to carry out a core mandate inevitably led to secrecy about many things.

The serious problems the SPCA finds itself in now all flow from the founding ethical dichotomy between the two mandates - law enforcement and animal welfare.

Good change is underway. For thirty years the real animal welfare movement slowly grew because of extreme dissatisfaction with the SPCA's policies and practices. In the last five years it has grown hugely as more and more people turn away from the SPCA and donate to groups they can see do real animal welfare. The SPCA saw this happening and instead of improving its practices or solving the problem of its conflicting mandates, it ramped up P.R. and attempted to shut down or defame some of its 'competition' using its police powers and the power of its millions of dollars donated for the welfare of animals.

Perhaps if the SPCA is successful in its attempt to have animal protection paid for by government it can concentrate on cruelty prevention alone and leave the animal welfare to others.

Market forces are controlling the SPCA just as they do all of us. The SPCA no longer has a lock on the animal welfare business and the baggage from its way of doing business is probably not fixable - not without an infusion of a fifty million dollars to rebuild its facilities and hire educated, ethical employees. The market has shifted to the small groups and there is probably no way to get it back because the small groups do it for love, not for money and so the SPCA can't afford to compete. It can't even compete successfully in the dog-catching business anymore as citizens are demanding that their municipalities ditch the appalling SPCA pounds.

That leaves law enforcement paid for by government. The SPCA is trying to get the government to fund animal protection (in the same way that government funds all other law enforcement, from municipal bylaw officers to the police, the RCMP, and the courts). I would be completely in favour of this if it weren't for the way I have seen animals suffer by SPCA seizures and the style of enforcement, which is absolutely frightening. There is no oversight of this powerful police force.