Accountability

I thought as a lead up to the Annual General Meeting of the NS SPCA I'd go back through old President's Messages and Year End Reports Published by the NS SPCA and presented at past AGM's and pull out what seemed to me like salient messages that seem applicable to current SPCA politics. I thought it might give people things to think about when they're looking at what the current state of affairs is - where the NS SPCA is at - and where they want it to be, who is in charge, who they want to be in charge, etc., etc.

The first President's message I'm going to quote from is the 2002-2003 report - that is SIX YEARS AGO. And the ring of it is eerily similar to today:

"Currently, thousands of healty or treatable adoptable animals are destroyed in Nova Scotia shelters and animal control facilities every year. In most of these cases, nothing would have prevented these animals from becoming family pets. In most cases, they ran out of time our housing availability. Each one was a life worth living. And each one deserved a better life than we were able to give them.

We are not yet a humane society.

... The best way to work with the community to promote caring, compassionate and responsible pet care an animal husbandry is to help people to do the right thing. These are the building blocks that help save lives - spay/neuyter, aggressive adoption programs, pet retention, support the community, feral cat assistance program, rehabilitation programs - But we must build the blocks before we can build with the blocks. So this year, the SPC bagan to gather its mortar together..."
...The Board believes that we made the following good decisions this year. WE:...
- employed no cost fundraising measures...
- passed newly revised bylaws as the foundation for enhanced activism and accountability...
- undertook the first steps towards greater branch accountability and organizational transparency...
- began the process of coalition-building with local rescue groups, pet supply stores, animal-service providers and other interested animal community members to explore creative methods to increase adoptions and pet retention..."

You can read more at http://spcans.ca/library/documents/NSSPC_Annual_Report_02-03.pdf

It's just funny that six years later that the Cape Breton SPCA is still being forced to kill 75% of the animals that come through it's doors.

Six years later when approached to trap feral cats in a neighbourhood in Dartmouth - the NS SPCA's approach is to catch the feral cats and immediately euthanize any cats it's able to trap.