I have decided to join in with my fellow Burnaby SPCA volunteers and express my concerns regarding the mistreatment of animals that has taken place at the Burnaby SPCA, which I have personally been a witness to for the past three years that I have been a volunteer there. I am hoping that the more voices you hear expressing and detailing the terrible conditions and treatment of the animals at this shelter, the sooner something will finally be done to resolve this very serious problem.

I have been a volunteer with the SPCA for over 20 years and have always been an advocate of its mission to prevent cruelty to animals. However, over the last three years my faith in the SPCA and its mission to uphold that mandate of prevention of cruelty to animals has been horribly shaken, and I know hold an entirely different opinion of the SPCA. I view the SPCA as an non-profit society that has gone terribly wrong and now appears to be operating as a profitable business with no regard for the safety and well-being of animals, employing a majority of sedentary, union employees who also seem to hold no regard for the caring and well-being of animals, (and I really don’t understand why or how a non-profit could even be part of a union?), and I also see it as an organization that is not being held accountable to uphold its mandate, least of all to its funders and public supporters who believe, as I once did, that the SPCA is effectively carrying out what it is mandated to do. I do not understand how this has been allowed to go so far and to continue for so long. It is time that something be done to rectify this situation for the safety of the animals, and I personally cannot stand to see it continue for even one more day. The only reason that I continue to remain as an SPCA volunteer is for the same reason that many of the volunteers do, because we love the animals and we fear the worst would happen if it were not for the volunteers to protect the animals from the staff and current SPCA bureaucracy, and that is truly a very sad state of affairs.

Over the past thee years as a volunteer at the Burnaby SPCA I have witnessed countless acts of neglect and cruelty inflicted upon innocent animals by SPCA staff, and much of it still haunts me to this day. Some of the worst incidents occurred when the shelter was still under the supervision of Carson Wilson and many of our small animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters were needlessly destroyed in very large numbers simply because staff said they did not have to room to keep them and that they were too much extra work to care for. Lisa, myself, and other volunteers always made certain that the animals were cared for and often offered to take them home or put them into foster care but were continually denied this request, as staff said they would not be adopted out if they were placed in foster care. So the animals would sit in cramped cages for months on end, many times without food and water during the week until the volunteers came on the weekend, finally to be destroyed when the volunteers were not present to prevent it. It was horrible, and the worst offence occurred when Lisa was away on a business trip for one week-end and every single young, healthy, and fully adoptable rabbit, guinea pig, and hamster, some of whom had not even been given a chance to be adopted yet, who were at the shelter were all destroyed by one Burnaby staff member named Nick, who was the acting supervisor in Caron’s absence. From that point on we have made it a volunteer initiative to remove as many small animals from the shelter and place them into foster care immediately in order to save them from the hands of the staff. I believe that particular staff member should have been brought up on charges for what he did; it was unforgivable and absolutely unnecessary.

The Burnaby shelter conditions have not seen much improvement since Jeff Lawson has taken over as supervisor, and I could easily relay a hundred more cases of neglect that I have witnessed over the past three years, involving dogs and cats that have had injuries or illnesses that have been left to fester and go untreated, to utter disregard for the safety of animals when mixing them in kennels together, poor kennel conditions causing injury and distress to animals, to staff impeding the adoption of animals for so many reasons I wouldn’t know where to begin, reasons such as delays in assessments, personal restrictions/opinions being a basis to deny adoptions, to delays in spaying/neutering and vet visits etc, and the list goes on, as well as the blatant denial of food and water and a clean and comfortable living environment, which should be the very minimum in care that all animals receive while at an SPCA shelter. The issues of neglect even include the worst offence, which is the extreme level of cold and calculated destruction of beautiful, healthy animals that deserved to be given the chance to find a loving home, and were taken to the SPCA with that intention in mind.

I would especially like to address the issue of animal assessments. This has become a very controversial issue amoung volunteers ever since it was implemented shortly after the moratorium was passed. It seems as though the assessment program has just become a way to get around the moratorium in that it again gives staff an opportunity to destroy perfectly adoptable animals under the blanket of an SPCA internal process. The assessments are not done in a timely fashion and many of the dogs are left to sit in the shelter for many weeks becoming more and more stressed while waiting to be assessed, and by the time they are assessed they do not pass, and are subsequently destroyed. The shelter system is an extremely stressful environment for any animal but particularly for the senior dogs or those who have been family pets for any significant period of time. The unfortunate part is that even if assessments are conducted immediately, in the scenario that I have just mentioned, it also presents a situation where a severely confused and stressed animal may act in an unpredictable manner, which would be very unlike their normal demeanor in familiar and less aggravated surroundings. There have been many dogs that have failed assessments, which volunteers have advocated on behalf of in order to give them another chance, and the results have been that after being placed in a home environment they have integrated amazingly well and become very well behaved and loving family pets. I understand that in cases of overt aggression or unpredictability it is required that the SPCA assess an animal’s behavior in order to prevent the adopting out of a potentially destructive animal into the community. However, this process already took place even before the assessment program was put in place, and at that time far less dogs were destroyed for far less biased reasons. The current assessment program is not operating as a fair and objective process with the object of public safety as its focus, it is a process that delays animal adoptions, places undue stress on shelter animals, adds to staff duties, and produces insufficient results in order to warrant the destruction of animals placed in SPCA care. The destruction of any animal in SPCA care should be an absolute last resort. Within the assessment scenario it should only be considered after more than one assessment has taken place, conducted by more than one different staff member, and after all alternative rescue attempts have been exhausted in order to find alternative placement for animals at risk

All I can say is that I am very disappointed and saddened by the current state that has befallen the SPCA, and I truly hope that these conditions are isolated to only a few local shelters and do not span across the entire SPCA network. I also hope that the more details that are relayed to those in charge, the more serious the issue becomes so that something will finally be done to stop the cruelty and neglect that exists WITHIN the SPCA. We as volunteers have been silent about these conditions for some time, as we feared repercussion from staff and further consequence to our beloved animals, but we can no longer be silent. We must now speak out, for ourselves, and for those who cannot, and insist that something be done. For the sake of the animals we can no longer tolerate these conditions. I wish to sincerely thank you for your attention to this matter, and I implore you to do something to rectify these atrocities immediately.