Does the Chilliwack SPCA still have any contracts with any municipalities to do its animal control and disposal?

A pound is a pound no matter how much volunteers try to make them into shelters. Finances and pubic safety mean that some animals, whether sick, badly behaved, or just not sold, are going to be killed. Pounds used to run very smoothly decade after decade, for hundreds of years actually. They still run smoothly when being an animal control/disposal agency is all they attempt to be and no one is attempting to make them do more animal welfare than there is money for.

But the animal-loving public is no longer going to let pounds run the way they run smoothly. So all pounds are in a state of flux. That is what we are witnessing with the non-stop criticism of all pounds, including (but certainly not limited to) those pound contracts the BC SPCA has with BC municipalities.

AAS's theory hasn't changed in 15 years: a pound only has to protect the public from dangerous and nuisance animals. That is all it should do. Dogs can easily be a public danger and a public nuisance. If a pound wants to stop killing it can allow animal welfare groups to take all unclaimed dogs and other animals if it has other animals. But since there is not a home for every animal, no real animal welfare agency should have a contract to dispose of dogs - or any other animals.

Pounds should only intake stray dogs because stray dogs are a public danger and a public nuisance, and pounds are the agencies that should kill dangerous dogs - that is why they exist.

If cats and rabbits become public nuisances then it must intake/dispose of them too, on the grounds that they are a public nuisance.

This is just what the BC SPCA has contracted to do with an untold number of BC municipalities for fifty years (untold to AAS anyway as we have asked and never been told).

This job is also known as the "dog-catcher". It is being the dog-catcher that has made so many employees, volunteers, and members of the public angry at the SPCA.

No pound should accept owner-surrendered animals; that is making taxpayers pay for an individual's free pet disposal and that is financially illogical and leads to over-crowding which can only be solved by killing to make space if the members of the animal rescue network have no room either.

In the last six years the BC SPCA has lost many of those contracts, mainly to other contractors which are made up of little amateur groups coming out of the blue and "knocking off" the SPCA's contracts. The SPCA has fought very hard to keep its contracts, but we think the SPCA losing the contracts is the best thing that can happen to it. As we have said for ten years, the SPCA can inspect pounds, write standards, enforce better standards, and take the dogs and cats on a pound's death row and give the animals all the help that the little groups give them. The little groups' management seems more competent than the BC SPCA since they are the ones that are growing financially.