ANIMAL ADVOCATES SOCIETY OF BC - SPCA - NEITHER ANIMAL WELFARISTS NOR ANIMAL ACTIVISTS

NEITHER ANIMAL WELFARISTS NOR ANIMAL ACTIVISTS
The SPCA takes credit for the work done by the true animal welfarists and activists, while running them down in the media.

During the huge wildfire in Salmon Arm in August 98 it was not the BC SPCA that evacuated "smoke effected deer" as it says on its web site. http://www.spca.bc.ca/about.htm It was a group called Critteraid that went up to a wildlife rehab centre and orchestrated the removal of one fawn, hawks, owls, skunks, raccoons, chickens and horses. "To the best of my knowledge the 32 Branches still do not have an organized evacuation or disaster plan/policy in place."

THE SPCA DOES NOT ACT!

And they boast about it. They sneeringly call those who do act, "animal acivists". The above makes one wonder how much of the SPCA web site, and media releases, and mail-outs are truthful? Look again at their site, http://www.spca.bc.ca/about.htm, scroll down to "1997...dedicated to treating and rehabilitating injured wildlife" and then go to our page Trigger-Happy SPCA and read another version of how the BC SPCA helps wildlife. The SPCA often takes credit for other struggling and broke groups' hard work. (See the whole letter from ex-SPCA director Laura Dean about who did all the rescue work in the interior forest fires of 1998. See also How the BC SPCA took credit from Creston PAWS, click here and how it treats racoons, click here). Most recently, after POWER (their mandate is to get the residential tenancy act changed to allow pets in rental accomodation) worked hard and spent hard-earned money to get a test-case before the courts, and won it, and then actually got the interest of the provincial government, the SPCA waltzed in, and grabbed the spotlight and the credit. And after referring to animal "rescue" groups as disreputable, the SPCA may have decided that the term "rescue" may be gaining public acceptance, and even some admiration, and maybe (horrors!) some donations, hence Stephen Huddart, Director of Community Relations, BC SPCA, in a letter to the Courier newspaper, claimed: "We rescued 2,400 animals..." Huddart also makes the interesting statement that the SPCA "responded to 20,000 complaints, 3400 of which involved allegations of abuse or neglect. That leaves 16,600 investigations that weren't about abuse or neglect. Were they to do with their obligations and duties under their pound contracts such as unlicenced or stray dogs? No wonder the staff are too busy to clean the excrement out of cages, wash blankets, exercise, socialize and sometimes even know what animals they have back in their grim cages.

AND TOO BUSY WITH THEIR POUND CONTRACTS TO PREVENT CRUELTY

The SPCA has also been saying, about the groups that are doing all the real work, "We are animal welfarists - they are animal activists". Frankly, we don't believe they are either. But why aren't they animal activists? Isn't that what they were created to do - act for animals? They leave the activism and the true animal welfare work to all the women who scrimp and save, and have bake sales, and go out fearfully in the middle of the night to take a dog that has suffered for years, because the SPCA DOES NOT ACT! And they boast about it by insultingly dismissing those who do real animal welfare as "activists".