Does AAS want to destroy the SPCA as CEO Craig Daniell keeps saying? The answer is 'No' now and was 'No' in January 2001 when we stood up to the SPCA's first SLAPP style law suit. We didn't want the SPCA destroyed then and we don't now.

Mr Daniell, in his intemperate style, has lashed out at tiny AAS many times, telling (shocked) people and the media that we are hell-bent on destroying the SPCA. Here is part of the reply we made to the SPCA's bullying lawyers in January 2001:

"What I have said from the beginning is that I don't wish to destroy the SPCA, just reform it, just as Carol Darby, one of the Vancouver Regional SPCA directors who was voted off the board for trying to improve the way dogs and cats were killed by the SPCA, said seventeen years ago. But Carol gave up when that board's one shot at reforming the SPCA failed. She and they didn't know that the only way to prove the SPCA's actions are deliberate policy was to systematically get the evidence.
We have much more evidence of deliberate avoidance of preventing cruelty and self-serving. The videos of suffering animals that the SPCA didn't help, and the voice-over of people begging us to help animals the SPCA won't help, are convincing enough alone to show that something is wrong.

But I feel that animals will be better served by fixing what is wrong.

What I want is for the BC SPCA to set up a reform committee. They can call it anything they want.

I do not want anyone fired - I think the really bad ones will disappear through attrition. Nor do I want the SPCA to spend all its money suddenly. I know from being in business that there must be resources to fall back on. Nor do I want a lot of salary decreases. I am not on a witch-hunt. I want some immediate reforms, such as an improved bylaws and constitution. And some immediate legislative initiatives to reduce the number of excess pets. And an eventual elimination of SPCA pound contracts, with a new job of overseeing private pound contractors and municipal pounds and writing standards for a pound's operation. The changes I want are reasonable and not very threatening and should be welcomed by an organization that purports to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves."

The SPCA has changed in several ways in the more than four years since I wrote that. It used to be rich and now it is broke. AAS did not do that, though the SPCA is claiming we are responsible in part. Most of the financial harm is the result of restructuring and that is provable. AAS has undoubtedly caused the loss of some money, but not much, and only because we report on what the SPCA does to harm itself. It keeps shooting itself. We can't seem to stop it from going down in its own flames. It used to have a flawless reputation (not deserved as we have shown), but it has done so many things to ruin that reputation that again, we think it must have a death wish.

It is starting to do some animal welfare (it did none in the past and we have shown that too). It is beginning to do pre-sales sterilization, and it is beginning to spend money on a few sick animals whereas in the past it just killed anything that was sick or even might be sick in the future because of exposure to disease in its diseased facilities. Of course, it is still doing that to cats as it did last week in Kamloops where the SPCA killed fifty-nine cats because they "might" have caught distemper. But after all, those are only cats. We haven't heard of any mass "prevention" killings of dogs since the Surrey SPCA killed at least six dogs last year for having kennel cough. (That must be what the word "Prevention" means in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.)