The Coquitlam SPCA has been a complaint-magnet as long as AAS has been around and much longer. We have countless accounts from volunteers and even some ex-staff, saved for ten years and received as recently as yesterday, about the callous killing, the decrepit facility (in spite of fifteen years of SPCA public promises to build a new one), and some unionized employees' attitudes to animals and rudeness to volunteers and the public.

In 2001, the City of Port Coquitlam chose to keep contracting with the BC SPCA at the time that City of Coquitlam chose to end their contract with the BC SPCA to collect and dispose of dogs. When SPCA practices like the lack of financial accountability and the complaints of cruelty finally got through to Coquitlam council, led mainly by Councillor Mae Reid, Coquitlam put a quick end to the decades-long contract, building its own state-of-the-art shelter and doing its own animal control bylaws enforcement. But the callous treatment of animals and the revelations of questionable financial practices by the SPCA wasn't enough for Port Coquitlam to contract with Coquitlam's new humane shelter.

Newspaper stories recount the growing complaints about the noise and now the old complaint about the lack of record-keeping. Port Coquitlam has still shown no concern for the welfare of animals at its contracted pound, but it may at last decide it's had enough of other SPCA practices and decide to join the Coquitlam shelter.