From: Christine
Sent: January 08, 2003 1:15 PM
To: Brian Houlihan; Joanne Halligan
Subject: Conditions at the Burnaby SPCA

January 8, 2003

Good day,

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 that I have personally been a witness to for the past two years. 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 for the SPCA for over 20 years and have always advocated its mission to prevent cruelty to animals, being that I am a passionate animal lover myself. However, over the last two 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 now hold an entirely different opinion of the SPCA. I now see the SPCA as an non-profit society that has gone terribly wrong somehow 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 its funders and public supporters who believe, as I once did, that the SPCA is doing 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 that is truly a very sad state of affairs.

In the two years 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 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, who were at the shelter were all destroyed by one Burnaby staff member. From that point on Lisa has made it her personal responsibility 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.

I could easily relay a hundred more cases of neglect that I have witness over the past 2 years, involving dogs and cats that have had injuries and illness and 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 impeding adoptions, 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, and it continues to include 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.

All I can say is that I am very disappointed and saddened by the state that has befallen the SPCA and I hope that these conditions are isolated to only a few local shelters and do not span across all of the SPCA shelters. 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 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 very soon.

Sincerely,

Christine W. Burnaby SPCA volunteer