"The SPCA provided on-going care and treatment for all of the animals."

If this is true (in the past the SPCA has given out the same P.R.when it has actually been killing some of the slow sellers - the sick or the fearful), then congratulations are in order for everyone who held the SPCA's feet to the fire for the last two years, making it begin use the PCA Act to actually prevent cruelty.

This is exactly the same Act that for a decade the SPCA said was incapable of being used this way. In fact, this is the Act which was twisted by the SPCA to give the green light to the very puppymillers that it is now making grandstanding, money-generating seizures from.

It took a lot of work to make the SPCA interpret the Act this way. AAS started in about 1995 to try to make the SPCA use the Act to prevent cruelty. We asked many times, and when that failed, we began investigating and documenting cases of severe neglect and abuse that the SPCA said the Act did not cover, even cases such as the dog that was dragged behind a truck, whose owner admitted it on television. And then we built the web site to (among other objectives), publish how the SPCA was not preventing cruelty.

We posted Jennifer Dickson's undercover documentation of the terrible conditions in puppymills in the Okanagan that the SPCA had said for decades was not cruelty, thereby keeping the puppymillers in business, in fact, even selling some of puppymillers used product. (Read here: http://www.animaladvocates.com/puppymill-investigations.htm)

The writing was on the wall at last, for all to see on the AAS web site. If the SPCA didn't "do something" about puppymills before the media and politicians got wind of how it was in bed with puppymillers, as the media and politicians had in Ontario, it was going to be hit with its worst P.R. disaster ever, as big or bigger than the revelation that one CEO had been paid over $204,000 a year, who then took the SPCA to court for $400,000 in compensation.

The BC SPCA CEO at the time, Douglas Brimacombe, (since also fired and also seeking compensation through the courts), did the smart thing. He hired away Craig Daniell from the Ontario SPCA, the man who defused the P.R. disaster there by suddenly swooping down, cameras blazing, on the very puppymillers that the OSPCA had kept in business for so long.

For six months AAS was thrilled by Mr Daniell, defending him against many critics for what we argued were problems he had inherited and that to expose them could weaken the SPCA financially, and that Mr Daniell needed an SPCA strong enough to do real cruelty prevention and real animal welfare. We consistently argued against the destruction of the SPCA, putting AAS outside the pale of those who argued it was past reforming and only wanted it destroyed.

We have recounted how we were finally forced to stop defending Mr Daniell, for too many of his decisions that flew in the face of honest cruelty prevention and real animal welfare, but we have never wanted the destruction of the BC SPCA and still don't. One of Mr Daniell's most egregiously anti-animal welfare actions was to permit SPCA branches to kill some of the dogs and cats it had "heroically rescued" in front of the TV cameras. We tracked case after case. Some are here: http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/WatchDogFP.htm