Actual policy is the actions that are taken at the operations level: in this case, what is actually being done to and for animals in SPCA branches. Actual policy can be the opposite of stated or written policy. The BC SPCA has a fifty year, provable history of animal disposal policies disguised as animal welfare policies. The only way to prove that is to get proof of the actual policies, which AAS has been doing since 1997.

AAS has been forced to investigate the BC SPCA because it is either deliberately misleading in its statements on its web sites and to the media, or because it is outright secretive.

The BC SPCA has no web page that informs the public what its actual working welfare polices are at any given time and at any given branch.

Those kept in the dark, kept guessing, and kept scrambling to save animals from the SPCA, include all the real animal welfare organizations that the SPCA keeps saying it "works with" but which are ignored and excluded and which are forced to sneak animals out of SPCAs to save their lives.

Those kept in the dark also include all the real animal welfarists who the SPCA pays thousands of dollars to its fat-cat lawyers to silence if they uncover too much, or get any facts wrong because the SPCA won't provide honest facts when asked, forcing these honest critics to use imprecise undercover methods of getting information.

Why doesn't the SPCA have a policy web page that tells everyone which branches are doing what in the way of animal welfare? For instance: which branches are still selling intact animals and which aren't anymore.

The SPCA should use a policy page to explain why it is improving animal welfare policies and what its goals are. But we suspect that no honest, forthright page like this will ever be made by the SPCA because to do so would reveal that all its past (and mostly present) animal disposal business policies are not animal welfare policies. It would be a bit like announcing one is no longer beating one's wife.

To read more posts on what the SPCA calls animal welfare: in Set Preferences, choose 12 months, then go to Edit/Find (on this page) and put welfare in the Find What space.

Here is AAS's definition of animal welfare, from http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/admin.pl/read/6644

True animal welfare is the same as human, especially child, welfare. Just because the word animal is placed in front of welfare does not change the meaning of the word welfare.

Here is a list of "Does" and Does not" that any organization or agency that claims to do welfare of any kind must adhere to or it is not really a homeless welfare agency.

True welfare does not:

1. Keep the homeless or abused in worse conditions than they came from.
2. Keep the homeless or abused in disease-filled facilities and kill them when they become sick.
3. Claim to have "rescued" the homeless or abused and then kill some because they are sick or difficult or expensive to deal with.
4. Kill some of the homeless or abused because of a lack of space.
5. Encourage behaviours that entrench the problem of homelessness and abuse. (In animal welfare, unlimited surrender of pets which both creates and supports a culture of abandonment).
6. Hire inexperienced staff and give them no training in welfare practices, only in how to kill some of the homeless or abused.
7. Offer no help to overcome behaviours that make the homeless or abused difficult to rehome.
8. Hand the homeless or abused over to strangers whose homes and suitability are not ever investigated.
9. Have no, or only tiny, programs to reduce the number of homeless or abused.
10. Not lobby for laws to control the causes of homelessness and abuse.

True welfare does:

1. Truly "shelters" the homeless in comforting, socially enriched conditions.
2. Maintain the highest standards of cleanliness and treats every disease.
3. Humanely euthanizes only the untreatably ill or injured.
4. Refuse to intake any more homeless until the space and resources are found, rather than kill some of the homeless to make room for more.
5. Teach that society has a duty to examine the causes of homelessness. (In animal welfare, to remove itself from supporting the problem of animal abandonment by setting the example with unlimited surrender.)
6. Teach the highest standards of ethical welfare, rather than teach how to kill or dispose of the homeless or abused.
7. Offer remediation programs and training.
8. Devote much time and energy into making sure that a new family is suitable and meets the highest standards.
9. Have programs to reduce the number of homeless (In animal welfare: spay/neuter and breeding regulations.)
10. Lobby for laws to better protect the homeless and abused.