April 23, 2000: Stephen Huddart, then BC SPCA P.R. flak, wrote a letter to the Vancouver Courier

In his letter, Huddart claimed that the Vancouver SPCA responded to 20,000 complaints, 3,400 of which involved allegations of abuse or neglect.

That reveals that the Society which exists to prevent cruelty, spent most of its time responding to dog control bylaw duties, the complaints it gets paid money to act on, such as stray, off-leash, unlicensed, and barking dogs. This is dog conrol - the antithesis of cruelty prevention and animal welfare, which cost the SPCA money. For a decade, AAS has called the way the SPCA responds to neglect complaints "SPCA drive-bys".

But lawyer Myriam Brulot says it better in her answering letter in the Courier (April 30, 2000):

"The numbers the SPCA cites include all of those cases where an investigator made a phone call or attended the premises, but essentially did nothing for the animal in question."