Ontario

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We’re happy to announce that SumOfUs.org, the amazing online campaign platform, is profiling BloodWatch on their site. Check it out and SIGN THE PETITION: Ban for-profit donor-paid plasma collection in Canada. SumOfUs.org is a new world-wide movement for a better global economy. Here’s what they stand for: Governments that answer to citizens – not corporations Fair […]

Gobsmacked. That’s the only rational response to news that a) a private company plans to set up shop in Toronto to buy blood plasma and; b) it is perfectly legal for them to do so. Have we already forgotten the tainted-blood tragedy – a debacle that left more than 20,000 Canadians infected with HIV and […]

Blood is a sensitive topic in Canada, and rightly so. About 30,000 Canadians were unknowingly infected with HIV and hepatitis C during the 1980s from tainted blood and plasma they had been assured was safe. Thousands of lives were cut short. Infected blood, purchased from disreputable sources, including derelicts on U.S. skid rows, was at […]

Ontario is moving to slam the door shut on pay-for-blood clinics before they even open up for business. Health Minister Deb Matthews said Friday that proposed legislation will be introduced in early spring that will stop Canadian Plasma Resources from opening up shop in Toronto and Hamilton. “They haven’t started up business yet so that […]

If Ontario does allow the for-profit model, McCarthy worries it will open the floodgates for similar clinics in other provinces. “There’s almost a point of no return if we introduce this type of model into Ontario,” says McCarthy. “It will create huge pressures for other provinces to feel compelled to have to join in because […]

Following the tainted blood scandal of the 1980s and the Krever Commission, Canada’s national blood system was established on the principle of voluntary donation through an agreement by the federal, provincial and territorial governments. That’s why I’m writing today to outline the steps our government is taking to prohibit the operation of private paid plasma […]

Ontario’s health minister is vowing to stamp out business that pays donors for blood and plasma, making an enemy of blood money. Deb Matthews says she’ll crack down on any payments she says threaten the supply’s integrity by siphoning donors to private clinics. “We don’t allow the sale of eggs, sperm, body parts and we […]

If Ontario’s health minister pushes through a ban on private clinics that collect blood and plasma, a GTA company says it will sue to recover nearly $7.5 million it’s already invested. The head of Canadian Plasma Resources, Barzin Bahardoust, had hoped to avoid a legal fight, but if Deb Matthews gets her way, he said […]

The CBC reports that the company tried to open clinics in Toronto in 2014, and when Ontario legally banned paying donors, it headed to Saskatchewan, where it was welcomed. It has hired lobbyists to try to persuade other provinces to let it in. Plasma, the company explains, “is the straw-coloured liquid portion of blood.” Hey, […]

Canadian Plasma Resources, having failed miserably with its plan to pay plasma donors in Toronto, has now set up shop in Saskatoon. Why Saskatchewan – or any other province, for that matter – would align itself with a company that has a controversial history and business plan is odd, especially given Canada’s painful history with […]

Ontario plans to join Quebec in banning payments to people for their blood and blood plasma after a paid-plasma clinic in Toronto opened its doors to donors. The governing Liberals re-introduced legislation Wednesday that also incorporates recommended changes to pharmacy oversight after more than 1,200 cancer patients in Ontario and New Brunswick received diluted chemotherapy […]

Ontario is taking aim once again at two pay-for-plasma clinics in Toronto, dusting off legislation to ban paid donations two weeks after Health Ministry inspectors swooped in to seize records at the facilities. The bill from Health Minister Eric Hoskins is being combined with another proposed law aimed at preventing another chemotherapy “under-dosing” scandal by […]

So why is the Ontario government so insistent on not allowing payments to people for their blood and blood plasma? We’re already using imported products that have been bought and paid for, so why not allow Ontarians to reap the benefit instead of American citizens? Two reasons, and they’re both good. One is that trust […]

Two decades ago, 30,000 Canadians, recipients of blood and plasma products, were infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Some of the tainted blood was purchased from “blood brokers” whose supplies came from Arkansas prisons, L.A.’s “skid row” and Russian funeral homes. Confronted with a blood shortage and weighing the odds, Health Canada and the Canadian […]

Permitting paid plasma collection by the private sector raises difficult questions. Will it be safe? Will a plasma-for-profit system prompt fewer volunteers to donate blood? Can parallel donor systems co-exist? And what are the risks of privatizing blood collection? There’s an ethical dimension, too. Because the clinics are located in inner-city neighbourhoods, where people welcome […]