The City and the SPCA are both culpable in this tragedy...

On Thursday's edition of CTV news, the new Manager of Cruelty Investigations for the BC SPCA, Craig Daniell, said that perhaps legislation is inadequate.

But in July, 2001, the SPCA said the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act WAS adequate to seize dogs suffering from social neglect. It said this at meetings held with the City in reaction to AAS's Report on Vancouver's yard dogs , "IT'S TIME!". http://www.animaladvocates.com/ItsTime.htm>

In this report (called "magnificent" by PETA) we supply proof that it is desocialized yard dogs that attack savagely and also supplied the City with specific reports of many of these dogs. (Read more about these meetings where the SPCA admitted that the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act DID permit it to seize for social neglect (after years of denying it did) and how the City lawyers then off-loaded the City's legal duty to protect its citizens from harm onto the SPCA, which then did nothing: http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1869>.

We believe that the City did not make a sincere attempt to monitor whether the SPCA was actually doing something about these dogs or not. In fact, the City subsequently accepted a report on some of these dogs from the Vancouver SPCA (the Eccles Report, April 23, 2001) that is so devoid of usable information that it should have been a clear signal to the City of the SPCA's inability or insincerity. Read more on this topic and link to the Eccles Report: http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1864>

The City may feel it is off the hook because the BC SPCA agreed to take care of this problem. But the City is NOT off the hook, because the SPCA did NOT take care of it. Neither of them did anything as far as we can tell. The City of Vancouver and the BC SPCA are both culpable, both morally and legally in our opinion.