Why does the SPCA every so often spend thousands of dollars to try to silence AAS?

The SPCA is afraid of only one thing....bad P.R. that causes lost donations. For fifty years at least the media was the SPCA's lap dog, repeating without criticism or investigation whatever the SPCA told it. The media obligingly called any SPCA critic an extremist. It helped the SPCA steal credit (which is money) from little, honest animal welfare organizations who were doing the real rescue work that the SPCA was only pretending to do.

December, 2000, AAS began paying for expensive newspaper ads showing chained dogs the SPCA was ignoring and directing readers to the AAS web site. In January 2001 the SPCA hit back, paying many thousands of donators' dollars to the law firm Owen Bird, threatening me with personal ruin. I reacted by posting several accounts SPCA cruelty that were horrifying. And I told the SPCA that I would not stop until it honestly reformed. In May, the SPCA announced it would reform. http://www.animaladvocates.com/libelthreat.htm. The media were uninterested in this story.

But media gullibility began to change in 2001 after the Sun reported on the $204,000 plus a lot of perks that one CEO was making. But still the media believed that the SPCA was doing real animal welfare.

Then that began to change too in 2002 when Vancouver SPCA volunteers told the media how the SPCA kills nice dogs for space (a necessary part of its used pet business). The SPCA lied and said that the dogs were dangerous and then it had to cobble together a 'scientific test' that 'proves' when a dog is dangerous. The media bought that unfortunately. But in 2002 AAS published its proof that the SPCA ignores horrible suffering, steals credit from little rescue groups who save the animals the SPCA has ignored; seizes healthy animals and then kills most of them in this story: http://www.animaladvocates.com/beaverdell-topaz.htm

And when AAS stepped up its expensive ad campaign that showed suffering dogs that the SPCA ignored, the SPCA attacked again, this time it used the tactic of frightening our Vancouver server, NetNation, so we had to move our site to a U.S. server. The media weren't interested in this second abuse of freedom of speech and misuse of donator's money.

But in October 2003, when the Sun's Barbara Yaffe wrote about the SPCA's thuggish raid on Forgotten Felines cat shelter, a shelter that was taking doomed and sick cats from the SPCA at the SPCA's request, the media really began to sit up and take notice. Thanks to CEO Craig Daniell's intemperate actions and hair-trigger temper, this story got on Rafe Mair. http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/ForgottenFelines.htm

And thanks to David Carrigg of the Vancouver Courier, who has never been fooled by the SPCA, the story of the Dalmatian that was found frozen on his chain in Surrey after years of complaints about this dog were ignored by the SPCA, got out in January 2004. http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/Frozendogs.htm

Worse was soon to come for the SPCA. In April 2004, Yaffe again wrote about the SPCA, with the headline The BC SPCA: A prison camp for animals. Yaffe wrote a story that many of us knew all about - how the SPCA let a dog die slowly and how Craig Daniell covered it up and didn't even fire the manager. Yaffe quoted her sources, and employee and a volunteer, "Both women used the term "Auschwitz" -- the name of a Second World War concentration camp in Poland -- to describe what they've witnessed in their respective shelters, and said there is an alarming insensitivity around the practice of euthanasia." Yaffe also outed Daniell about SPCA euthanasia "statistics".
http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/PrisonCampForAnimals.htm

But compared to that, as bad as it was, it was nothing compared to how in June, Cheech really blew the SPCA wide open for the media to see clearly. The media got to see the SPCA's killing of nice dogs, the SPCA's phoney "science", how angry so many insiders are at the SPCA, and how some staff and volunteers are at the point of being ready to face charges of theft to stop the SPCA from killing so frequently and arbitrarily. Again, CEO Daniell was responsible for igniting a fire-storm of bad P.R. because of his tyrannical response to AAS's offer to foster and rehabilitate Cheech. Instead of defusing the approaching disaster, he created it by sending out head office reinforcements to make sure that AAS's offer was blocked and that Cheech was quickly killed. That forced those who knew that Cheech didn't deserve to die to steal him. That rescue was shown on TV that night. CTV made it its job to investigate all the SPCA lies - a first for the media.

AAS then had its own video-taped assessment done on Cheech, showing what a nice pup he is, and called a press conference. Our video of a good-natured pup was on TV. The Cheech P.R. disaster was in the media for weeks, in fact, it is still being referred to. AAS has been recommending to SPCA volunteers, worried that an SPCA is about to kill a nice dog, to "Cheech" the dog - to remove the dog to a safe place and then to contact the media.

Something new happened with the Cheech incident. The media started too use the AAS web site to get background, quotes, and photos. The AAS web site was doing just what it was created to do.

The terrible P.R. generated by Cheech, and the fear that AAS was going to do it again, and the media starting to go to AAS for material and quotes, was too much for the SPCA and a few days ago, the SPCA's law firm, Lawson Lundell, threatened our U.S. server, and we again had to move.

This is all about P.R and money. The SPCA has a very busy, but absolutely terrible, P.R. department. It churns out lie after lie which are getting easier and easier to disprove all the time. It told so many lies about Cheech that there is cause to wonder about it.

The whole wonderful Cheech story, including the List of Lies, is right on our front page at www.animaladvocates.com