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There is an element of faith when you pick up the phone and dial 911. You report your emergency, and you are assured that help is already on the way. That's how it works in our society.

But when you do the same thing to report an abused or neglected animal, even if that animal is in grave danger, there is no guarantee that help will be dispatched swiftly.

In fact, it could be days before someone can respond, and it might only come when the New Brunswick Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has another complaint in the same geographic area and can make the trip more financially worthwhile kind of like killing two birds with one stone, if you will.

It's not because the people who work for the SPCA don't care about neglected and abused animals. It's because provincial funding to carry out their provincially-directed mandate is a cruel joke.

The SPCA is given the job of responding to about 2,000 animal complaints a year, but it has to bankroll almost all of the work through fundraising. Their annual budget of about $300,000 included about $40,000 in provincial funding last year ($30,000 to pay vet bills, and about $9,000 for rural animal control dog tags), and the rest came from donations. So let's get this straight the province gives them a job to do but won't give them the tools to do it, but of course, it still expects the job to get done.

It's not like this is a paper-pushing government department where, if the work doesn't get done, the result is some shiny brochure doesn't get printed. These are animals we're talking about living, breathing, starving, injured animals.

The chief animal protection officer the top dog, pardon the pun is paid for 16 hours of work a week, and he's the only protection officer in the province with a guarantee of paid work, such as it is. His staff of 14 part time animal protection officers are only paid if they're called out, earning $11.50 an hour when they do. It's no wonder there's a high turnover, what with no assurance of actual work and a mere 39 cents a kilometre for mileage. And it's no wonder they all have real jobs to actually pay the bills, thereby limiting their ability to respond to call outs.

Last week, the head protection officer went to the media in desperation to shine a light on the ridiculous circumstances the SPCA is forced to work under. A day later, Local Government Minister Carmel Robichaud suddenly announced $120,000 in interim funding to "assist the NBSPCA in its daily enforcement." She also said she hoped to introduce amendments to the legislation under which they operate, but there were no details. That seems an awful lot like slapping a Band-Aid on a gushing wound, or a desperate attempt to shut those pleading voices up.

There is no other way to describe this mess other than to call it a governmental disaster.

It's time for the province to stop playing dead and learn a few new tricks by hiring full time officers, paying them a fair wage, strengthening the legislation, equipping them with the tools they need to carry out their mandate and funding the whole shot.

The 15 people at the SPCA are charged with a duty to investigate complaints of neglect and cruelty in our province and it's a miracle they managed to respond to 2,000 complaints last year. Any action they are able to take, any good they are able to do is in spite of the government of the Province of New Brunswick, not because of it.