AAS letter to Lawson Lundell on being threatened the secong time:
In January of 2001, the SPCA's then lawyers, Owen Bird, sent me a letter threatening me with personal ruin if I did not purge the AAS web site of all material "defaming" the SPCA. I had so much damning evidence of my allegations against the SPCA and had so thoroughly documented my charges, that I refused, posted more incriminating evidence of decades of SPCA dishonesty, and said that only if the SPCA reformed would I temper the AAS web site to reflect that. In May 2001, the BC SPCA announced it would reform and began by holding Community Consultations throughout the province to which interested parties were invited to submit ideas and complaints.
I believe that it this came about only because of the power and influence of the Internet.
WHY AAS HAS LEFT MUCH OF ITS MATERIAL ABOUT THE SPCA ON ITS WEB SITE?
ONE: THE SPCA HOLDS SECRET MEETING:
At one of the two subsequent meetings that I was then permitted to attend, the SPCA promised to "raise the bar" on seizures and prosecutions for the kind of neglect of dogs that AAS's reports so graphically describe. Decades of neglect by the BC SPCA of expensive animal welfare in favour of paid animal control are the central tenet of my allegations of SPCA perfidy. The SPCA promised the City that it would upgrade its existing Animal Care Guidelines (which in my opinion were never used and were only SPCA P.R. material) to include social neglect, and would start to apply them.
The SPCA's Community Consultation panel released its report in November 2001. The report made clear that many people said to the SPCA panel what AAS was saying on its web.
When I read the Community Consultation Report I was pleased to see that it was more condemning of past SPCA practice than I thought it would be, and it made what I thought was a fair start to the process of reform, and so when the SPCA put the report on its web site I put a link to it, right from our web site's front page. And then I waited to see how much of the report would actually be implemented, or if it was just more SPCA self-serving P.R. before publishing AAS opinion of the report. The Community Consultation Report was still just on paper, and in fact, my hesitancy to praise the SPCA was justified by its subsequent actions.
TWO: THE SPCA WILL NOT MEET WITH ME OR PERMIT ME TO KNOW IN WHAT WAY IT IS REFORMING: Since the SPCA's announcement that it would reform, and especially after the release of the Community Consultation report, I had many times asked to meet with BC SPCA CEO Douglas Brimacombe and BC SPCA president Michael Steven, to try to establish a working relationship so that I could explain face-to-face that I did not relish harming the SPCA, nor did I ever wish to destroy it as I had been accused of wanting to do by some BC SPCA directors and staff; that my only motive was to make it do what it had the power to do: prevent cruelty and promote animal welfare, which I had proved by several years of investigation it had not been doing for at least fifty years. None of my emails to Mr Brimacombe and Mr Steven were answered or acknowledged.
I also carried on a lengthy correspondence with Cindy Soules, at that time Communications and Planning manager, in which I said repeatedly that I did not wish to destroy the SPCA or even to harm anyone, and asking her to please urge Mr Brimacombe to meet with me so that I could understand what the SPCA planned so that I could keep my promise to temper the AAS web site.
I also wrote Marguerite Vogel, BC SPCA Director and author of the Community Consultation Report. Ms Soules and Ms Vogel both said that they knew that I was sincere, that they believed that I only wanted to help the SPCA to reform, and that I really wanted to get this over with and get on with my life. Unfortunately, as will be seen further in this letter, the SPCA's actions kept tending to erode trust, not create trust.
I repeatedly asked Ms Soules to apprise me of any actions taken by the SPCA that were evidence that it was trying to do better, but never received any. I asked the same of Ms Vogel. I was told by Ms Soules to watch the SPCA's web site, but watch where and when? I did diligently check daily for some time before realizing that it was not productive as there was no way for me to know where and when to look. I particularly asked to be told when the SPCA made a seizure for neglect, as not doing this is one of my central arguments that the SPCA has avoided animal welfare in favour of animal control. I wanted to post the good news on the AAS messageboard and praise the SPCA. I was told to read the SPCA's press releases. Nevertheless, I did post the news of seizures whenever I became aware of them.
THREE: THE KILLING OF SIX DOGS BY THE VANCOUVER SPCA: On January 24th, 2002, the Vancouver SPCA euthanized at least six, possibly as many as twenty, dogs, just to make space for more. Volunteers went on television to condemn this. The BC SPCA countered by saying the dogs were aggressive. The volunteers refuted this by telling how they had walked, groomed and interacted with the dogs for months. If the dogs truly were aggressive, the SPCA would not have allowed volunteers to handle them. The new, reformed, BC SPCA was caught lying. It had "housecleaned" for space, just as it has done for decades. Because it lied - not because employees were behaving in "old" ways - I knew that this meant that there was no reformed SPCA, that its past deceitful behaviour was its present behaviour. The AAS web site and messageboard allowed the public access to this story.
At this point, if the SPCA had behaved decently, and said honestly, We regret that these dogs were killed for lack of space, we are implementing new policies and procedures to make sure this never happens again, I would have roundly applauded the SPCA and breathed a sigh of profound relief that my financially and emotionally draining fight to make the SPCA honest might be over, and that I could start to actively support the SPCA's "New Direction", which is all I have ever wanted. I told Ms Soules, and others at the BC SPCA, many times, that I knew that the SPCA would not be able to control the actions of the employees who were hired to carry out its pound contracting duties very soon; in fact I told Ms Soules that I realized that the full reform of the SPCA would take as long as five years and would involve bitter fights with the SPCA's employees' union; that I could understand and sympathize with lapses of behaviour and mistakes; that I never expected the SPCA to be perfectly what I would like, that differences of opinions and even of some standards were not the primary issues for me; but that what I needed to see and know was that the SPCA was going to start being honest. Without honesty I would have no way to know if the SPCA was truly reforming and no way to know when to safely temper AAS's web site.
I was ready, even anxious to put this onerous, negative, and frightening task behind me and assist the SPCA in whatever ways I could to fulfil its new ideals. I expressed this to Ms Soules many times in emails and in phone conversations. No one could have been happier, more relieved, or more willing to trust than I was at that time. I posted notices on the AAS messageboard that AAS was looking for positive things to say about SPCAs and asked readers to post the good things they knew that their local SPCA was doing. Unfortunately, I only heard praise for the Nanaimo SPCA, but I contacted the branch manager and asked her to provide us with a list of all its programs and successes which she did and which I then posted.
FOUR: THE "NO-KILL MORATORIUM": On March 2, 2002, in order to counteract the enormous harm done to it by the exposure on television of the killing of the six dogs at the Vancouver SPCA, the SPCA announced a "No-Kill Moratorium". The positive p.r. value of this announcement was equal to, or perhaps even greater than, the negative publicity over the killing of the six dogs. The BC SPCA announced that euthanasias would only be preformed after a dog had been assessed for behaviour according to a test devised by a Dr Suzanne Hetts and which was downloaded from the Internet.
But the moratorium was so hastily conceived and so badly implemented that it resulted in an instant backlash from the branches because they were forced to go on taking in dogs because of the BC SPCA's many pound contracts with municipalities to dispose of dogs, and because of the BC SPCA's open surrender policy which requires branches to empty its cells of unsold animals to make room for more surrendered animals. Most branches thought they were no longer allowed to euthanize for space and very quickly became full to bursting. I have a copy of the letter written by the Prince George Branch that confirms this http://www.animaladvocates.com/wdw-prince-george.htm. Some branches were threatening the unthinkable - to go public with this mess. Some branches, notably Surrey branch, understood that the clever wording of the moratorium permitted euthanizing for physical or behavioural ill health, and as any behaviour that keeps a dog from being sold can be labelled ill-behaviour, this was really business as usual only with brand new window dressing. But most branches were in an uproar. The donating public understood none of this; it only heard the words no-kill and moratorium on killing and, I have no doubt, opened its purse strings generously. I believe that, as usual, the SPCA's apparent concern for animals was really concern for itself, to repair the damage done by the exposure of the killing of the six dogs.
The 'moratorium' was then, just as hastily, reworked, and anther version announced, but I still do not know how honest that version is either. It has a catchy new name: Companion Animal Management Program (CAMP) and the SPCA has said it is based on the ?scientifically validated? Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) behaviour tests, (to get which the BC SPCA sent its employee with 'scientific credentials', Nadine Gourkow, a cat expert, to England, at least once). Ms Gourkow was extensively interviewed and written about in the media on the subject of the validity of the RSPCA tests and how the tests were going to ensure better matches between dogs and new owners and would result in less euthanasia.
Requests to the BC SPCA to be told which test is currently being used, the RSPCA test that received so much publicity, or the Hetts behaviour test that the SPCA downloaded from the internet when it made the first 'moratorium' announcement in March, have not elicited an answer.
I am not making a distinction between the two tests. I do not know if either or neither of them are a fair (to the dog) way to determine whether a dog lives or dies, but I believe that in the announcements of the two moratoriums and the two dog behaviour tests, that the BC SPCA may have, once again, behaved in a self-serving and dishonest way. I cannot know which test the BC SPCA is currently using, as it will not say.
Whichever test it is using, there has been much alarm and concern from the animal welfare community on the test?s implementation. It has been alleged that the test was used by Ms Gourkow and an assistant to order the killing of cats and dogs. A letter on the subject written by a BC SPCA Director supports this allegation.
Once again the some branches were in an uproar. Managers and staff's own experience and assessments of the dogs and cats in their care was being forcefully overridden by the Head Office CAMP managers. It was called the 'cull order'. This was stopped as far as I can tell, but I believe it was only the power of the internet and web site messageboards such as CYABC http://www.b2g3.com/boards/board.cgi?user=CYABC, and Brindleweb http://brindleweb.com/bbs/index.cgi and AAS?s http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl that caused the BC SPCA to stop forcing branches to kill dogs and cats that the branches thought were rehomable.
February 26th, 2002, Mr Brimacombe finally, after almost a year of me asking, emailed me an invitation to meet with him, but it was too late. My trust was already undermined by the killing of the six dogs and the lying about the reason they were killed, and on March 2nd, before I could respond to Mr Brimacombe's offer, the BC SPCA announced its ill-conceived, and what I believe to be dishonest, 'moratorium'.
These actions by the BC SPCA forced me to go back to waiting to see when and if the SPCA was going to be honest so that I could trust it enough to temper the AAS web site. The whole point was not if the SPCA was making mistakes still, but if it was being honest about its mistakes so that it could be trusted.
Proof followed proof that the SPCA had not reformed but was just using new P.R. to do business the same old way.
FIVE: THE SPCA CONTINUED TO GIVE FALSE "EUTHANASIA" STATISTICS TO THE MEDIA
SIX: THE SPCA'S REPORT TO THE CITY OF VANCOUVER
SEVEN: THE SPCA ALLOWED GLOBAL TELEVISION TO GIVE IT CREDIT for the rescue of fifty-six chained dogs from the woods near Creston BC, which had been reported to the SPCA many times and which it had ignored. Donations were directed away from this small group that desperately needed both the credit and the money and was directed to the SPCA. After AAS posted this disgrace on its messageboard, many people wrote letters to Global, the BC SPCA and the CRTC, Global aired another story in which the proper group was given credit and the SPCA offered to pay some of Creston PAWS vet bills. Again - it was the power of the web that rectified this iniquity.
EIGHT: The SPCA still permits its own staff and directors to breed and sell dogs and cats while the SPCA's shelters kill unwanted dogs and cats. These breeders, some of which have quite large breeding operations, are taking potential homes away from the very animals the SPCA "shelters" and sometimes kills. Some surgically mutilate their pups in contravention of official BC SPCA policy and all SPCA breeders operate in contravention of BC SPCA ads which urge everyone to spay and neuter their pets because of the 'pet overpopulation problem'. http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1649 and http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1245 and http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1313
NINE: SPCA "education events" continue to be little more than self-promotion, and sometimes even promotion of pet stores that sell puppy mill pups.
TEN: Retreats for staff to Harrison Hot Springs and Manning Park while animals in the SPCA's charge continue to be incarcerated in cold, cramped, miserable cells and animals that may cost too much to save are killed for 'lack of resources' (the SPCA's words).
ELEVEN: The SPCA continues to use donations meant for animal welfare to hire lawyers to silence critics and for expensive staff retreats.
TWELVE: CAMP and the 'cull order' (explained previously).
THIRTEEN: Grandstanding seizures that seem to be done for the media and for donations where animals are subjected by the SPCA to extreme distress and even death (http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1647
FOURTEEN: Killing rather than rehabilitating http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1671 and making the victims of SPCA avoidance of enforcement of the PCA Act http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi/newsroom.pl/read/1681
FIFTEEN: Still selling intact animals that can be (and have been) used for breeding ..\..\..\..\My Documents\Jackie Watkins of FOTA re intact dog sold by Surrey SPCA.eml and ..\..\..\..\My Documents\Letter from Nikki O'Connor re the selling of male and female intact Old English Sheepdogs by the Prince George SPCA.eml
I have more examples of what I believe is proof that the SPCA has not decided to just tell the plain unvarnished truth, and without the truth I cannot know if what the SPCA is saying and doing is real and I cannot temper the AAS website.
TRUST STILL NOT POSSIBLE: The SPCA has demonstrated by these, and other actions that I have not named here, that any trust in it would be premature and misplaced. After so many evidences of continued SPCA self-seeking and dissembling, I have come to the realization that the SPCA might have to be watched, possibly forever. There is to be no relief - not until the SPCA stops self-serving and adopts an animal-serving ethic. And I realized that I would not be able to temper the AAS web site until I could trust the SPCA.
Because the task of forcing the multi-million dollar BC SPCA to actually prevent cruelty and actually promote animal welfare required so much of my time I have been unable to raise all the funds necessary to pay for AAS's hands-on rescue work and have been using my own money for years. I have had my cars, home, and garden repeatedly destroyed by fostering up to ten large, unsocialized dogs at a time, and have been unable to realize income in other ways. No one could be more relieved and happy than I to believe that the SPCA can finally be trusted to put animals first. I have not done what I have done for any personal reason, but only for the animals whose suffering I witness daily. I am not persisting in my exposure of the SPCA because of any personal gain, nor because of any personal delight; in fact this task is draining, both financially and emotionally and I hope daily to be able to get back to a normal life.