Emma wrote AAS and asked us if we knew that staffing is an Administration responsibilty. Here is our relpy:

Yes, in policy the Administration hires and fires. But in fact the Board can lean really heavily on CEO Brimacombe any time it wants to. The Board can influence staffing that way. And it can pass policy that says no one who breeds, mutilates, etc can work for the SPCA and then the staff who do this must desist, or quit, or be fired.

So - the Board can influence staffing two ways - informally through pressure, and formally through policy changes.

In his letter, Peter Havlik (2nd Vice-president) acknowledges the first: He says he will raise the matter with Brimacombe.

I believe that this matter will also be raised at the BoD meeting on Saturday and for all we know, a new policy may come of it, addressing the 2nd way to deal with this.

If a new staff policy is voted in, then everyone who took a few minutes to write a letter to the Board are all to be congratulated. This is all and only about numbers and the power of numbers. Numbers equals donations, donations equals money. For fifty years the SPCA threw away individual letters in which animal-lovers pleaded for it to help suffering animals. AAS believes that this is still not about animal welfare for the SPCA, at least not the CEO and not some of the Board of Directors, although Mr Havlik may be one of the exceptions. This is about numbers: on the SPCA's side it is about the numbers in its bottom line. On our side it is about animal welfare.

We can only beat them with numbers. The more people who the SPCA knows are no longer weak individuals but strong members of a strong organization that is watching them, the more it will have to do what is right.

AAS realized five years ago that staff breeding was one of the greatest of the many frauds the SPCA was guilty of and one of the greatest proofs of that fraud.

Our page on this http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-breeds.htm was written two years before we built the web. It was one of the pages in our pre-web hard-cover report sent to all Vancouver media in 1999, which ALL the media ignored. If we can make the SPCA change this policy it will be another great victory and brings us closer to the goal of an honest SPCA that actually prevents cruelty and promotes animal welfare.

Thank you all who understood this and made your voice heard and count, by taking a moment to write a letter of your own composing or to cut and paste our sample letter. You just truly spoke for animals.

Judy