Now the Ministry of Natural Resources is probing the way the Humane Society released wildlife.
Other stories:
Ottawa Humane Distances Self...
How one woman fought Shelter boss…
Province questions Shelter’s use of donor funds…
I think the Toronto Humane Society is going to need some kind of third party to run the place and re-establish some credibility.
27th Street 
To correct Salvinalis Fontalis. I urge you to read the original Globe and Mail expose of the THS from 30May to 2Jun 2009 by Kate Hammer and the 2006 Star expose by Andrew Chung. The dessicated cat is indicative of the poor animal care, but the sensationalist value of it should not take away from the more ordinary conditions which made the THS an atrocious facitlity.
Here is the story in a nutshell:
Understaffing by firing volunteers and firing volunteer co-ordinators to eliminate witnesses to poor animal care or discredit those who may talk to the media.
Abject managerial incompetence as in no animal care experience, more supervisors then employees, indiscriminate firing and abuse of shelter workers so that there have been literally several hundred people fired or quit since Trow came to office eight years ago.
Millions spent on frivolous or vexatious or bad-faith litigation most of which they lose, including suing the Hamilton Humane Society for saying that they are not associated with the THS, including SLAPP (strategic litigation against popular participation) against former employees and volunteers who talked about the THS to the media in violation of non-disclosure agreements.
Adopting out vicious or sick or injured animals without warning to adopters. An extremely high return rate – 40%.
Fraudulent statistics: it is wish thinking to believe that a facility can admit unlimited numbers of animals, adopt out a majority of them and euthainze only 7%. The real stats show that there are not 10,000 cats and dogs admitted, but fewer then 3000. And from the 3000, there are certainly not 6000+ adoptions. You will see this repeated over and over again: from the new President Bob Hambley. It is a pure lie.
Then there is the terrible veterinary care. Vets forced to ask permission to euthanize animals who are unadoptable, in pain and with no chance of recovery, animals left to die in cages (5000+ since 1JAN2005 to the present). This rate of animals dying in cages is incredible, it is unparellelled, it is not a matter of exploring every medial option, it is a simple matter of neglect – no staff, no food, overcrowding, unnutritious or spolied food, 3000+ treatements missed in the past 10 months alove, and, no volunteers creates unsanitary conditons, disease runs rampant. Vet techs who are untrained, with no credentials, urged to simply mark that treatments were given to create an ongoing fraud.
Tens of thousands of fines to the WSIB for workers mauled, often by the same dogs and cats, over and over again, leading to high turnover, permenant injuries, infections, and even one death by cat bite, and investigations by the Ministry of Labour and Toronto Public Health.
As per the stats, the number of animals actually adopted is very small, there is a permenant population of animals who have been there for many months to many years languishing in their own excrement, subject to one disease after another, poor or non-existent vet care.
How do they do it, how do they get away with it? That is an interesting question, which goes to the consciousness of guilt, conspiracy to commit an indictable offence charges against some of the managers. Make the halls look shiny, cordon off the vast numbers of rooms of animals who are severely ill, promulgate fraudulent statistics, non-disclosure agreements, capitalizing on the good-will of the public, THS hired OSPCA Agents and Inspectors and a Chief Vet who will sincerely lie in court and discredit anyone as ‘disgruntled’ to keep their jobs and stay in the limelight, and the failure of the OSPCA to investigate sooner, to disclose and act on the 2006 report and countless testimonials, only acting due to the pressure of the Globe expose.
It is not about a philosophical position of keeping animals and adopting others that others might euthanize, it is simple neglect and greed and criminal irresponsibility.
I’m afraid more disturbing information will be revealed the further this organization is investigated.
Salvelinas has a good idea of it being split into 3-5 separate facilities.
Geez since this hit the fan there have been some truly grim newspaper articles concerning THS, perhaps one of the worst being that they found a cat in a cage dead so long it had been mummified. One has to wonder how often someone tried to feed that cat. I also read that THS was attempting to look after about 1500 animals and I think that just has to cause serious problems. The humane society branches that I am familiar with start to gag when they reach 100 cats and a dozen or so dogs. I just can not imagine any organization attempting to care adequately for that many animals and I think that long term this organization needs to be split into 3-5 separate smaller facilities each with a number of animals that can be monitored easily. I wonder if the size of the operation led to big money funding and if it was control of the big money that caused the folks running the place to lose sight of their objectives. One of the links that Mr. A posted talked about conflict with unions at THS. In my opinion if a humane society is so big that it needs enough paid employees that they can form a union then there is something seriously wrong. The very best run humane societies are run staffed largely by caring volunteers.