We think the SPCA's goal to prevent cruelty is the same as most people's, certainly the same as anyone who describes themselves as an animal-lover. That is the same goal as AAS and the hundreds of other small formal and informal organizations and networks and individuals who do their bit to prevent suffering.

Where AAS and the SPCA part company is on what the SPCA has done with some of the animals it has seized using its police powers under the PCA Act. We take exception to the SPCA having killed them, not treated illnesses, sold them through auctions, and sold them with no home checks.

We also take exception to the seizure and cruelty charges laid against people who struggled to give their best to animals that people give them because they are afraid to take their animal to an SPCA. These struggling animal rescuers are often actually treating illness in the animals when the SPCA seizes the animals and sometimes kills them, and then has Crown lay cruelty charges against this person and makes them pay huge fines and huger "costs". The animal rescuer is described in the media in the most shameful terms and is vilified by being described as extremely cruel and sometimes a "hoarder" (a mental illness) in a way the no other police forces are allowed to do.

A prominent Q.C. lawyer recently told AAS that the SPCA is "running roughshod" over people. Everyone ought to be concerned about possible abuse of power in a society whose safety is based on the rule of law, so we are concerned that the SPCA's use of power be investigated by the government just on general principles. But it is what happens to animals at the SPCA that is AAS's real concern.