By fifty years of SPCA dog-disposing pound contracting and one hundred years of "open" surrender policy, the twin policies that require the SPCA to kill many thousands of pets a year, the BC SPCA has made pet owners in BC dependant on it to dispose of its unwanted pets, just as drug addicts are dependant on their supplier.

Even if the SPCA wanted to stop the fraud of an animal welfare society having paid pound contracts to dispose of stray and dangerous dogs, and even if it wanted to stop killing one surrendered pet to make room for the next surrendered pet (a practice which is the exact opposite of compassionate as the SPCA claims, but rather has resulted in the killing by the SPCA of at least a half a million unwanted pets), it cannot make the pet-surrendering public go off this service "cold turkey" - not without creating a crises in pet control and not without an uncomprehending public stopping millions of dollars in donations.

As for the argument that if SPCA became closed (no kill) shelters and turned pet abandoners away if it was full, that more pets would be abandoned on the side of the road, that is a moot point.

First, two wrongs cannot make a right and the proof of how open surrender is immoral is in the number of pets killed by the Society that claims to be saving their lives, and the amount of deceit and self-serving by that Society in order to do that killing without anyone figuring out what it was doing.

Second, pets are being abandoned that way already and almost every one is found by someone or some alternative animal rescue society which really does save it.

Third, many surrendering owners will be forced to take their pet to be euthanized by a Vet and made to do the deed and pay for it themselves, instead of SPCA donators unwittingly paying for the SPCA to be society's pet-disposer.

Once BC pet owners understand that getting rid of the pet they so casually bought is not going to be as easy as just walking into their local SPCA free pet-disposal and second-hand sales centre, then many people will not get a pet in the first place. This will result in a reduced market for pets which will result in less breeding, something that the SPCA has said needs to be controlled. Pet breeding can be controlled by onerous legislation or by simple and effective market forces. Forcing pet surrenders to pay for both purchase and surrender will reduce the market for pets and reduce the number of bred and surrendered pets.

AAS does not believe that the BC SPCA is society's pet disposer for the reasons it has historically claimed, that "it's a nasty job, but someone has to do it and we're more humane than others". The SPCA hired the kind of people who were willing to kill pets, assembly-line style, with no attempts to make the helpless pets more adoptable by grooming, neutering, medicating, socializing, walking or training. It lied about the number of deaths. And most effectively of all, it cleverly blamed the "irresponsible public" while enabling that irresponsible behaviour by providing free pet-disposal.

As for being more humane than other poundkeepers? Vancouver City Pound, the District of North Vancouver pound, the Coquitlam pound, all beat the SPCA to the punch. Without public outrage and public scrutiny and the efforts of a brave few in exposing the SPCA's version of "humanity" and lobbying municipalities to run their own, really humane pounds, the SPCA would still be carrying on its business of grim, 19th century style, bottom line, cheap dog disposal in Coquitlam and the District of North Vancouver.

The SPCA has never admitted how all this worked to its benefit by providing constant new "product" (the SPCA's own term for the animals in it's "care") to sell to the pet-buying public and by attracting millions of dollars in donations annually by demonstrating how busy it was "saving" animals.

The SPCA must kill a lot of pets for some time to come whether or not it intends to rescind the twin policies that require it to kill thousands of pets a year - open surrender and pound contracting - because of the public's dependence on these services, and because the average animal-lover does not understand how the policies it insists the SPCA perform (especially open surrender) are the very policies that require the SPCA to do what they object to - kill thousands of animals.

Either way the SPCA needed a water-tight, media-dazzling, science-based excuse for killing because in January 2002 the SPCA was exposed on TV for killing six nice dogs and was exposed lying about why the dogs were killed, and CAMP has supplied that excuse, replete with university degrees and "state of the art" programs and tests. http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-six-dogs.htm

CAMP is mistrusted by AAS and the volunteers who have seen it implemented because the tests that determine which dogs die were implemented quickly, but the remedial programs to save lives (training, education, etc) are for the most part still just on paper. AAS fears that CAMP will permit the SPCA to continue the twin policies that require it to kill so many pets by providing the media with a seemingly unassailable "scientific" justification, provided by Nadine Gourkow, the BC SPCA's Animal Welfare Research Manager and head of CAMP. Gourkow was recently asked if a dog would be euthanized if it failed just one of the test steps, but did not answer. But Gourkow did admit that killing for space was CAMP policy; that "orange zone" dogs (some problems, not quickly sellable, and may require money to be spent on remedial help) can be killed to make room for "green zone" dogs (problem-free, quickly sellable with little expense).

The March 2002 hastily-devised Moratorium on killing for space was replaced four months later in July, by the equally hastily devised CAMP Phase One that lifted the moratorium on killing for space and convinced the media (and hence the public) that the SPCA would only kill dogs if the dogs were proved "scientifically " to be unrehabilitatable.

Killing is an option that permits the SPCA to never have to understand dogs or to have to spend money on true rehabilitation. AAS and other true no-kill societies do not have the euthanasia option and so have no choice but to learn to really understand dogs, their language and needs, and how to teach them social behaviour. AAS has learned all this by having to make many large unsocialized dogs get along in their home shelters, and by paying thousands for trainers.

The SPCA claims that CAMP has resulted in better matching of dogs to new owners, but volunteers tell AAS that little or no matching is attempted by SPCA staff.

The SPCA claims that CAMP has resulted in reduced euthanasias, but that is impossible to prove because for decades the SPCA systematically misrepresented its euthanasia figures and even now there is no independent audit of euthanasia statistics.

The SPCA is claiming that it does home checks, but volunteers tell us that with the possible exception of some foster people, no home checks are being made.

If the SPCA is using CAMP to do the best it can until it can get out of open surrender and dog control contracting, then AAS supports it (as long as it is honestly applied). But if the SPCA is using CAMP to protect itself from another p.r. disaster like the killing of the six dogs in Vancouver, and to retain those policies, then AAS will have to keep watching and criticizing.

The SPCA has had two years in which to decide about pound contracting and open surrender. If it has, it is not saying.

Note: If the SPCA actually did truly humane pound contracting where municipalities were unwilling to, then continued pound contracting can be somewhat justified. But only if SPCA shelters were not causing such distress that they were responsible for making dogs unadoptable and then killing them, as they currently are. See what SPCA "shelters" are like: http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-haves-have-nots.htm and how SPCA's ruin dogs in their "care" http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-maple-ridge.htm.

The SPCA must also insist that standards of poundkeeping guidelines be written and it must be prepared to seize animals from substandard pounds and prosecute them for causing distress, and it can't while its own pounds are so awful.