There are other blatantly anti-animal welfare SPCA policies that have been changed in the last two years, policies that AAS was forced to publicly criticize the SPCA for, because it refused to change until it felt the pressure from an informed public.

After decades of permitting its staff and directors to profit from breeding and selling pets, while the SPCA killed as many as a hundred thousand excess pets a year, the SPCA stopped this, at least for any new employees or directors.

After decades of taking money to kill healthy but unwanted pets for anyone who paid, sometimes even if the customer had nothing to prove the animal was theirs, the SPCA has said it will no longer do this part of the business of pet disposal.

After making many seizures in the past two years, under Mr Daniell's direction, without giving the owners a chance to rectify the alleged "distress", as the Act says it must, the SPCA suddenly and without warning or notice of new standards, started to seize dogs from places that were better than its own diseased cells, and then killing some of the seized. That is not honest cruelty prevention, and as far from animal welfare as one can get. (Read more: http://www.animaladvocates.com/ILLEGAL-SEIZURES/Illegal-SeizuresLP.htm)

But at least the SPCA now says with every press release something to the effect, "The owners have had several months to follow orders to relieve the distress of the animals but refused to do so." The SPCA says that AAS lies and is misinformed. But it changes policy when AAS investigates and proves that policies are not animal welfare, but part of an animal disposal business, and when AAS documents and proves that it is not adhering to the demands Act.

AAS obtained legal opinion to back our claim that the SPCA was ruthlessly ignoring the Act it was created to enforce and uphold:

Alexander Holburn Beaudin and Lang,
Vancouver, BC
August 13, 2003

Our plain reading of section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c.372 is that if an authorized agent is of the opinion that an animal is in distress AND the owner does not take steps to relieve the animal's distress or the owner cannot be found and informed of the animal's distress, then the authorized agent may take any action it considers necessary to relieve the animal's distress. So assuming that there is no issue as to being unable to locate the owner, it is only after the owner does not promptly take steps to relieve the animal's distress, that the authorized agent can take any action to relieve the animal's distress. This necessarily implies that the SPCA must give the owner an opportunity to take steps to relieve the animal's distress before the SPCA can take any action of its own to relieve the animal's distress, including taking custody of the animal.

AAS is glad of course, that it has made the SPCA start preventing cruelty, but we are also concerned that there is no recourse for owners when healthy animals are seized, perhaps illegally, by officers of the law, except for the prohibitively expensive legal system.

When the police misuse the law, complaints to the Police Complaints Board can be made. There is no such remedy for those who the SPCA has mistreated. The SPCA is protected from all scrutiny by the fact of it being created within an Act. There is no way to see its true financial records, no way to complain of abusive behaviour by its "cops", no way to prevent the SPCA from defaming innocent people by bringing the media to seizures, or posting defaming statements on its web site, and sending out defaming press releases, except for the defamed/threatened to pay a lawyer.

The SPCA, in spite of very deep cuts to animal welfare, and in spite of $10 million in deficits, has no compunction at using money given by donators for animal welfare to terrorize its critics and its animal-owning targets. Deep pockets are another weapon of intimidation.

AAS is dedicated to making the SPCA honest, nothing more, nothing less. If the SPCA were honest, it would either get out of the used pet business or start doing it right. If the SPCA were honest, it would write standards for kennels and breeders and farmers and shelters, before it stormed in, guns metaphorically blazing, cameras rolling, seizing the very animals it only recently said were not in distress.

We made the SPCA start enforcing the Act, and now we have to make it do that honestly. But there would be nothing for AAS to say, if the SPCA just did all this itself.