Accountability
The issue.
The BCSPCA is often accused of being a secretive organization that is highly bureaucratic.
Report Recommendations
Accountability is a huge issue with the public and one that the BCSPCA should take seriously. The independent panel recommends that the BCSPCA be more open and transparent.
We understand that the Society is undergoing an organizational renewal that should see it governed as one legal entity, rather than as a federation of independently governed branches. We hope that achieving accountability will be easier under this new structure. However, whether or not the structure changes, the BCSPCA must make itself accountable to those it depends on for its survival: donors and members, volunteers, staff.

My Comments:
Nothing has improved.
In fact there seems to be even less accountability than ever. Board members don’t register their comments or how they vote at their meeting; zero communications come back to members when information is brought forward. The organization is even more secretive and bureaucratic than ever. Everyone who wants to become a member has to sign that they will go along with the current system otherwise they will not be allowed to become a member!

If anyone who is a member has the temerity to express a thought about any issue that is not in complete accord with the "head office bureaucracy" version they stand a good chance of having their membership taken away. If an experienced volunteer suggests another way that may be better for the animals they can, and have been, stopped from volunteering with the Society.

Informed expertise that would save the Society hundreds of thousands of dollars is ignored even when it has been brought to the attention of senior staff and board members.

As the report stated above - survival of the BCSPCA requires that it make itself accountable and transparent to donors, members, volunteers and staff. The fact that there has been no improvement is a significant component of the reasons that the survival of the Society is now an open question!

Mike Stephen,
Ex-SPCA volunteer and CAC member