....that the SPCA used the argument that they were so much more humane than the municipal pounds, to expand its dog control/disposing business to almost every lower mainland municipality.

But once it got the business, it used the very machine that it said was so cruel, and even after an engineer inspected all those machines and found that they were all uncalibrated and were causing terrible suffering, the SPCA dog disposal business bosses refused to stop using them.

Why? Follow the money of course...

"Clint Frearson, a spokesman for the Langley SPCA, said dogs are electrocuted because it is cheaper than other methods of euthanasia."

From http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-electrothanator-history.htm

...'the report from Clint Davy, a director of the Vancouver Regional SPCA, who was voted off the board of the Vancouver SPCA for being too humane (along with five other directors who only asked that the Vancouver SPCA stop using the electrothanator and the gas box), and a UBC engineer, describes how every electrothanator in all Vancouver Regional shelters was haywired and uncalibrated and how none of the staff were trained it its proper use; how the dogs burned because of improper use of the electrodes; how instead of using the rear-leg electrode which draws the current from the ears to the back leg thus going through the heart and resulting in a quick death, the employees made the dogs stand in water, often resulting in the current going from the ears through the front legs, not killing the dog, and so that the procedure had to be repeated sometimes five to six times. Davy also reports incidents of terrified and injured dogs being forcefully dragged into the machines which stank of burned hair and the feces of terrified dying dogs.'