Ontario approves Spanish pharmaceutical firm Grifols paying plasma donors despite ban

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The Ontario government has confirmed for the first time that it approves of a private company using a legal loophole to pay blood plasma donors in the province despite a ban on the practice, as the company prepares to open its first location in Ontario later this year.

Canadian Blood Services, a national charity that runs the blood system everywhere but Quebec, announced in 2022 that it would partner with the company, a Spanish pharmaceutical firm called Grifols, to collect blood plasma. Grifols pays donors and makes its profits by processing and reselling their plasma, while CBS was founded on the principle of a voluntary donation system.

Paying for blood donations is barred in three provinces: British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. The bans include paying for plasma, a straw-coloured fluid in blood used for transfusions and to make immunoglobulin, a therapy commonly used for people with immune disorders.

The laws that ban payments in B.C. and Ontario contain exemptions for CBS to pay donors if needed. When CBS first announced the deal with Grifols, it said it believed Grifols could operate in B.C. and Ontario because it was acting as an “agent” of CBS.

B.C. said last year that it disagreed, and Grifols has stayed out of the province. But Ontario stayed mum, and CBS and Grifols continued their plans, even announcing last summer that they were scouting locations in the province to set up new collection centres that would pay donors.

E-mails recently obtained through access-to-information law by advocacy group BloodWatch and shared with The Globe and Mail reveal that in the days leading up to the summer announcement CBS was privately beseeching the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to provide it with a written opinion that Grifols’s plans were legal.

“CBS indicated that without a letter confirming the Ministry’s permission for Grifols to operate in Ontario, Grifols’ five (5) collection centres in Ontario could be cancelled,” said a briefing document sent between public servants in the ministry on June 7, 2023, one day before CBS and Grifols announced their plans.

The Globe contacted Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones’s office late last week to ask about the e-mails. When asked if the government had ever provided such written permission to CBS, spokesperson Hannah Jensen said, simply, “No.”

When asked if the government believed Grifols was operating in accordance with the blood-donation legislation, Ms. Jensen said, “Yes.”

This was the first time the provincial government had publicly shared its view on the legality of the arrangement. The minister’s office did not provide any details about its interpretation of the law.

Grifols spokesperson Brad Pick said the company plans to open a plasma-donation centre in Whitby this December, with locations in Cambridge and Hamilton following in 2025. He said Grifols is planning two more locations in Ontario and aims to have 15 centres in Canada by the end of 2025, including those it purchased from Canada Plasma Resources.

The company bought a manufacturing facility in Montreal in 2020 to produce plasma-derived therapies, and Mr. Pick said Grifols expects to begin producing one of those therapies, albumin, this year, and plans to be running at full capacity by 2027. The Quebec government announced in December it was lending the publicly traded, Barcelona-based company $36-million for construction costs.

CBS has not disclosed the financial terms and other details of its deal with Grifols. The charity said in a statement that it will continue with its own plans to build new plasma donor centres, alongside Grifols. CBS has opened nine new clinics in Ontario and B.C. in recent years, and said it plans to add two more – one in each province – in the coming years.

“Canadian Blood Services’ priority is ensuring patients in Canada continue to have access to the essential therapies they need,” the agency said.

CBS also said it is not on the hook for any financial penalties if Grifols’s operations in Ontario were to cease.

The agreement between CBS and Grifols has faced opposition from public-health advocates and groups representing health care workers, whose concerns include the possibility that paid centres will draw donors away from the voluntary system.

“Ceding control of our donor base and plasma supply to an international private company is the worst possible scenario for patients,” said BloodWatch executive director Kat Lanteigne.

The Ontario Nurses’ Association said it believed the deal violated provincial law and undermined the public health care system. “Premier [Doug] Ford is laying out the red carpet for a private, multinational corporation to make off with profits from a blood and plasma supply that our patients rely on,” union president Erin Ariss said in a statement.