AAS obtained legal opinion on the requirement for the SPCA to issue an Offence Warning Notice and permit the owner to take steps to relieve the alleged distressful conditions, before the SPCA is permitted to seize:

Alexander Holburn Beaudin and Lang,
Vancouver, BC
August 13, 2003

Our plain reading of section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c.372 is that if an authorized agent is of the opinion that an animal is in distress AND the owner does not take steps to relieve the animal's distress or the owner cannot be found and informed of the animal's distress, then the authorized agent may take any action it considers necessary to relieve the animal's distress. So assuming that there is no issue as to being unable to locate the owner, it is only after the owner does not promptly take steps to relieve the animal's distress, that the authorized agent can take any action to relieve the animal's distress. This necessarily implies that the SPCA must give the owner an opportunity to take steps to relieve the animal's distress before the SPCA can take any action of its own to relieve the animal's distress, including taking custody of the animal.

Regina vs Ann Brown: Provincial Court of British Columbia, Surrey, BC, May 25, 2000, file number 104289: Precedent ruling that the SPCA MUST give the owner an opportunity to correct the alleged deficiencies before obtaining a warrant to seize

Judge N.G. MacDonald, after excluding the evidence, acquitted Ms Brown

 
From court transcript lines 34 to 41: Judge MacDonald says, "...instead of contacting the owner to give the owner an opportunity to relieve the distress in the animals, the officers went to the Justice of the Peace under Section 13 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and sought and obtained a warrant based on the Information to Obtain the Warrant."

Animal Advocates has documented many instances of the SPCA obtaining warrants and then making seizures of animals without first issuing an Offence Warning Notice, and of one instance (known to us) of the SPCA seizing a healthy mare and foal without a warrant at all!  January 2007 - A QC criminal lawyer told AAS that the government knows that the SPCA has been "running roughshod over people" and "is being reined in." That is borne out by recent SPCA press releases where it is always carefully stated that the owner of the seized animals was given warnings.

AAS obtained legal opinion on the SPCA "having to" return animals to abusers if it is paid its "costs":

Alexander Holburn Beaudin and Lang,
Vancouver, BC
July 25, 2003:

"There is no express provision in the Act which specifically states that the SPCA must return the seized animal to its owner if the owner has paid all costs of the seizure and made attempts to improve the conditions that the animal was living under.  However, it can be inferred that, in including subsection 25(1), the legislature intended that in order for the SPCA to keep an animal in its custody permanently, the SPCA should apply to the Supreme Court for such an order. "

AAS comment: Applying for an order of custody costs the SPCA money and  keeping abused animals in custody costs money. We are not privy to the reasons that the SPCA chooses to return some animals and not others, the in the case of the puppy mill dogs seized from Chilliwack puppymiller Karen Raffle, the SPCA was paid its seizure costs which may have totaled over $11,000 before it returned what it had called the "severely sick and neglected" animals to Raffle.