Are things worse, are more animals being killed, and more animals sick at SPCA shelters than they ever were, as many critics insist?

They can't be - it's not logically possible.

Do the math: the number of animals surrendered and in SPCAs, minus the number of animals adopted (sold), equals the number of animals that must be killed. That is a stable equation.

But many people are saying that the "shelters" are now badly overcrowded since the SPCA announced a moratorium on killing for space. If they are more crowded that can only mean that a lot of animals were secretly killed before that aren't now. And of course they were.

Are things actually better? They may be. The SPCA is more frequently begging for adoptors and foster homes and it is groping its way to finding ways to save a few by insisting on assessments being done. The fact that the assessments are being done badly, politically, and by the wrong people, does not mean that assessing is wrong, just the way the SPCA is using it. The SPCA would have to use it far less if it got out of pound contracting and changed its surrender policy from unlimited to limited.

Most of the defenders of SPCA pound contracting and all those who say that the SPCA is wrong to consider getting out of direct animal services may be SPCA pound employees trying to save their jobs and who cannot but know what things have been like at SPCAs for decades.

AAS has been told - repeatedly - for years - of decades of boxes of kittens that were put down daily at many SPCAs, sometimes several boxes a day. And we've been told of the branches in the country (the majority of SPCAs) where boxes of puppies also went straight into the euth room.

How can anyone defend that service? The service of "getting rid of" society's excess animals, sweeping them under the carpet because it had to pretend it wasn't? While pretending hypocritically to be animal-loving? How can it get any worse?

As for the hue and cry about all the sick animals at SPCAs (cats at the Victoria SPCA have been targeted by the SPCA's most vocal critics), these critics are either unaware of the history of massive URI infections and parvo and distemper and kennel cough outbreaks, or they are ignoring it because it suits their personal agenda to make the SPCA look worse under the new reforms than when they had carte blanche to run their pound contracts the way they wanted. (They were given this carte blanche by past policy at the BC SPCA, but that too has changed.)

If the SPCA is going to drop the "service" of pound contracting, then good for them! Let it be open where the public can see the real numbers, not a lot of falsified euthanasia figures.

And if it decides to drop the "service" of killing animals already in its "care" in order to take in more, by changing its open surrender policy, then good for the SPCA again.

The SPCA has made some grievous errors in its attempts to defuse critics and to implement policy change. It moved too quickly without due thought, in our opinion. It allowed decisions about animal welfare to be made by people whose knowledge of animals was very limited.

The SPCA should be putting its money into cruelty enforcement, into hiring lawyers to prosecute, into spay/neuter and education, not into paying employees to euthanize the unwanted.

Is bylaw enforcement a paid service the SPCA ought to perform for municipalities? It has been argued that the SPCA can at the same time educate people if it has a presence in a community. In fact it always claimed it did, but it didn't. Often SPCA employees actually made sympathetic comments to animal abusers they were investigating on a complaint and were supposed to be educating, such as "Ignore your neighbour, they're just trouble-makers", (at least where the SPCA had pound contracts).

We have said for several years that the SPCA should be paid to enforce the Provincial Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the same as the police are paid to enforce the Criminal Code of Canada. If the SPCA were paid it would not need to enforce at the municipal level, it could afford to hire and train many more provincial Special Constables.

And it can educate people on what is legal and acceptable treatment of animals through media ads that do more than just ask people to send them money, it can run ads like AAS has, showing what is the wrong and telling what is the right treatment of animals.

We could have wished that the process of reform hadn't been so fraught with politics and errors in judgement, but we are hopeful nonetheless that real reform is coming. And so we are not, unlike many critics, demanding anyone's head - we did not ever want to "bring down" the SPCA - we are not its enemy. We continue to wait and watch and help the SPCA to reform by holding its feet to the fire.