In BC, there is a huge back-up network of little societies that have relieved much of the pressure on the pest-pet disposal industry by taking what this industry falsely calls "unadoptable" animals: the sick, or old, the badly behaved, and the just-too-common to be sold. All are first labelled "unadoptable" and then killed. In truth, they are only animals that have not been sold - up to that moment. The proof of this is that many sick animals are given by the SPCA to the little alternative groups, which do not label them at all, but make them well, and then rehome them, proving the animals were adoptable.

In BC, the PCA Act permits any animal in "distress" to be seized and killed. The definition of distress in the Act is so broad that even if the distress is being medically treated by the animal's owner, that does not prevent the animal from being seized and charges of cruelty laid. In BC, it is safer to kill any animal that is suffering from any medical condition, no matter how slight. This applies to individual animal-owners as well as all "shelters" and pounds.

So there are several reasons why pounds and big shelters kill sick animals: to make space for disease-free animals that might sell and to avoid being charged with cruelty to animals under the PCA Act.

In BC there are a growing number of pounds and big shelters that network with the little groups to avoid the huge kill (not "euthanasia") figures of the past.

In 2000, the population of Clark County was 1,375,765. What were the BC SPCA's kill figures in 2000 for an area of BC with a comparable population? In 2004, BC SPCA CEO Craig Daniell, told Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe that "...[the BC SPCA] does not have statistics on the number that get euthanized.... it is working on compiling them for The Vancouver Sun."

Yaffe also wrote: "The head of the SPCA, Craig Daniell, also noted that B.C.'s SPCA has one of the lowest euthanasia rates anywhere in North America. Such an assurance is puzzling since Mr. Daniell has repeatedly stated no current statistics on euthanasia are available for the Lower Mainland, that he would provide them as soon as they become available. How then can he know how the SPCA compares to counterparts elsewhere? (Read more at http://animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/newsroom.pl/read/5247)

There are still no kill statistics published by the BC SPCA. We are certain that they are lessening with every passing year since 2000 when AAS began explaining real animal welfare on its website at the same time as the number of alternative animal welfare groups increased hugely and as pounds like the City of Vancouver Pound announced it was no-kill. This caused a flood of criticism of the SPCA and the loss of its pound contracts in municipalities such as North Vancouver District, Coquitlam, and others. The loss of those contracts has enabled the SPCA to kill fewer animals. Space in SPCA pounds was freed up for dogs from other SPCA branches around BC.

Thanks to forward-thinking pounds like Vancouver's, North Vancouver District's, Coquitlam's, and the Capital Regional District pound near Victoria, now many more animals never get to an SPCA in the first place (Richmond is the latest place where animals will not end up in an SPCA), and many more are rescued from the SPCA by the alternative groups. The SPCA itself is transporting dogs from areas of BC where there are fewer prospective homes to centers where there are better chances of *rehoming them. The SPCA's figures can't have failed to go down. Yet - still there are no figures published.

*Rehoming an animal without a home check done, not even a follow-up phone call (not even for dogs that are known to have problems), and no rehabilitation training offered for dogs, cannot properly be called an adoption in our opinion. Until those things are done, it is simply a "sale".