Informed wrote: "When the municipality contracts the SPCA to do the animal control the Municipality has the ability to dictate how the job is done. Remember the Municipality is the SPCA’s customer. So, if local people have a problem with the animal control and they cannot get satisfaction from the SPCA they have an avenue to appeal, the Municipality. Under the AAS scheme there is only one chance, the Municipality. "

AAS answer: The "one chance - the municipality" is just the point. One place to direct concerns, one body to approach, no one to pass the buck to. Evidence from North Vancouver and Coquitlam is that in spite of being told by city halls to do more neglect enforcement and improve the shelters, the SPCA just didn't. Jeff Lawson, the long-time superintendent of the North Van SPCA, and head of CUPE local 1622, was quoted in a Nick Read column of 1995 or 96 admitting that although a definition of neglect had been adopted in North Vancouver* the SPCA had never used it - this while AAS was getting many reports of chained, isolated, and neglected dogs with no shelter, living in feces, and with infrequent water and food.

The crafting of the bylaw was in response to a group of North Vancouver animal-lovers threatening to go after the pound contract if the SPCA didn't do better, and even then it took eight years to get these simple laws adopted in a community that is notoriously animal-loving - somebody stonewalled its adoption obviously.

*( AAS used this bylaw to build its campaign to get humane treatment of dogs bylaws adopted in all lower mainland municipalities with the addition of an "exercise" section)

Informed wrote: "I admit I do not know one way or the other about the following operations but, has AAS been to any Council meetings in: New West, Hope, Chilliwack, Mission, Vancouver, West Van, Kent, Whistler, Pemberton, Victoria, Kelowna, Penticton, Princeton and so on. If not, does that mean they are satisfied with the way things a handled in all of those areas? Is AAS not interested in looking into other pound operations? Or is AAS just interested attacking the SPCA? "

AAS answer: AAS's size and budget does not allow travel to all these places, but we have been all over the lower mainland from Lions Bay to Abbotsford. We urge animal-lover in the rest of the province to take up the torch for animals; we try to help them and keep them informed. And Yes, our focus is the SPCA because "fixing" the SPCA is the only we can help hundreds of thousands of animals in BC. instead of just the few that hands-on permits. As for improving pounds? Aside from helping to boot out the SPCA from North Vancouver and Coquitlam? AAS dropped all its own work in 1998 to try to help the VCP pound improve but politics and personalities got in the way. http://www.animaladvocates.com/vcp-euthanasias.htm

Informed wrote: "Why is AAS only focusing on dogs in pounds? They seem to completely ignore the cats in those same places. Cats are dying at a far greater rate."

AAS answer: This is the second time Informed has asked this question and here is our second answer: We don't "do" fish either, so what is your point? We advocate for all animals and we do hands-on with dogs. We financially support a cat rescue group. And the greatest thing AAS did for cats? I helped to kick the SPCA and its tiny, grim, dark cages for cats out of North Vancouver and now the cats have couches and sunshine and soon a garden. Go see for yourself. And when cat were our hands-on work, for ten years, and we had a shelter with 60 cats in it, we investigated cat breeding and wrote a proposed cat-control bylaw in reaction to the useless and cat-killing bylaw that was being promoted by cat group and adopted in the lower mainland (and supported by the SPCA which saw in contractual cat-control the chance to be paid by municipalities to impound and kill all the cats that they were currently killing for "free"). http://www.animaladvocates.com/too-many-cats.htm

Informed wrote: "The SPCA does not deny killing dogs so what is it they are keeping secret?"

AAS answer: The SPCA's euthanasia stats were false. Where have you been?

The answers to all Informed questions are in our web mag. There is no point in explaining over and over why we believe that no one, no agency can keep free from corruption if it does two conflicting things and we think Informed is wrong to say that they are not conflicting. We don't just think that, the proof is everywhere: fifty years of SPCA pound contracting - justified by the SPCA on the very grounds that Informed uses to justify it, has produced vile shelters and hard employees and massive disposal of unwanted pets - no education, no definition of neglect in law, no control of breeding to name a few lapses.