Staff of the $20 million dollar SPCA are saying that donations to the Society are down and it is all tiny AAS's fault.

And Directors of the $20 million dollar SPCA are suing tiny AAS in Supreme Court.

No one can begin to match the harm the SPCA does to itself, completely unaided by AAS.

First, in 2002, the SPCA revealed that the CEO of the fired Vancouver SPCA was making over $203,000 a year. The media had a hayday with that. Then it was revealed that the fired CEO was suing for over $400,000 that his contract promised him.

The next CEO ran the SPCA into a multi-million dollar hole, got fired, and also sued. The media loved that one too. The media can understand financially interesting stories.

But the media still was in the dark about aspects of the SPCA much worse than financial jiggery-pokery.

That is, until CEO Craig Daniell sent his bullies to bully a wonderful, humane, real cat welfare shelter, Forgotten Felines, in Richmond. Typically, the SPCA is so badly managed that Head Office didn't even know that two SPCA branches were giving sick cats to Forgotten Felines, cats that would be killed by the SPCA if Forgotten Felines didn't take them. The bullies, including CEO Craig Daniell, said all Forgotten Felines cats should be dead, and in fact, that was the terrifying impression that Forgotten Felines founder, Penny March, was left with, that the SPCA was going to seize all her cats and kill them. The SPCA justified its uniformed bullies stamping around the Forgotten Felines shelter, on the grounds that the cats were too free to mingle and one or two were sick. Those one or two were under vet care and had been saved from the SPCA!

That story opened up the SPCA and Craig Daniell to more scrutiny by the media and he was hammered in the Sun and by Rafe Mair. (Read it all here: http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/ForgottenFelines.htm)

And then came Sun columnist, Barbara Yaffe's, article titled " BC SPCA - a Prison Camp for Animals", that revealed the dirty business of SPCA pet disposal at work, all because, when CEO Craig Daniell was told by staff and volunteers what had happened, he defended the manager. So they went to the media. And this is what a clearly horrified Yaffe wrote ( http://www.animaladvocates.com/Watchdog/PrisonCampForAnimals.htm) for which the SPCA did not attempt to sue the Sun, the Sun having deeper pockets than the SPCA. The SPCA only sues little critics, just one more manifestation of what AAS alleges, that they are all a bunch of bullies.

Could Daniell and his P.R. sidekick make things worse? You betcha! They had barely warmed up to their task of driving away donators, turning off municipal staff and mayors and councillors, and prodding the media even further.

Cheech's Great Escape was next. How CEO Daniell and his P.R. person mishandled this is almost beyond belief, unless you have been observing the SPCA closely, and then it is only another piece in the pattern of animal disposal, deceit, and bullying. The full story, photos, video, are here http://www.animaladvocates.com/CHEECH/Cheechs-front-page.htm. In short, the SPCA wanted to kill a nervous pup rather than rehabilitate him. For some Delta SPCA staff and volunteers, this was the last straw, this was the dog that pushed them to defy the SPCA, steal Cheech, have the police set on them, and lose their jobs - because they dared to do what the SPCA does not do - real animal welfare.

A few hours before Cheech was rescued from the Delta SPCA by two employees and a volunteer, with the aid of more volunteers, AAS offered to CEO Daniell to foster and rehabilitate Cheech. Some staff and volunteers, one a dog trainer, had offered to foster and rehabilitate Cheech too.

A sound leader would have defused this situation by accepting an offer, or by at least postponing Cheech's destruction until everyone was consulted. What CEO Daniell did , with the assistance of his P.R. person, was to fan an ember into a raging inferno of media fascination, and outraged the public and Delta Mayor and councillors. Night after night on TV the SPCA's lies and bullying were exposed. It is the story that will never die because the media will use it over and over, just as it has in the Leader story above, six months later.

Those are the big, self-inflicted stories that are destroying the SPCA. AAS has had no part in them, aside from helping with Cheech after the SPCA already drove a stake through its own heart. We simply report what we are told, everyday, about the SPCA.

What's the next big story that is going to show the media and all of BC what the SPCA is really like? It may be our day in court when we will tell the world all we know. Or it may be one of the SPCA's self-serving, bullying, highly questionable seizures.

Sadly, there may be no way to prevent the SPCA from self-destructing. The board, who ought to be the bosses, are compliant and often uninformed by the executive. And the chief executive, Craig Daniell, is responsible for all the rash, intemperate, and bullying actions that are eating away at the SPCA's credibility.

AAS has not ever wanted the destruction of the BC SPCA and we still don't. We only ask that it do real animal welfare and that it be open, transparent, and accountable. Nothing else will silence us.