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Davidson also has an idea where to find the money. “We always tell them to look at their executives wages. It’s definitely a top heavy bloated organization.” Indeed, CBS CEO Dr. Graham Sher, earned more than $800 thousand last year. An astounding nine Vice Presidents together made another cool $3.2 million.

It’s one thing to want to keep your workers poor and precarious. Many companies do it. But donors? “These days donors probably have more complaints about scheduling and clinic times than employees do.” That’s what Ron Stockton told us when we first talked to him in January of this year. Stockton is the  NSUPE business agent for the PEI local now on strike. “With CBS it is never about delivering service, it is always about getting the biggest bang for your buck,” Stockton says. A 2015 press release issued by CBS announced the Canada-wide closure of three permanent clinics, the replacement of a permanent clinic with a mobile one, pulling mobile clinics from 16 communities, and “adjusting clinic schedules across the country.” “CBS is being transformed into a business, as opposed to a public service or a humanitarian organization. These days it’s all about automation and squeezing efficiencies out of donors and workers,” Stockton concludes.

“When you walk into the clinic you register by inserting your health card into some kind of ATM machine, then you have your blood taken by an employee who is too rushed to talk to you, then you schedule your next appointment at another machine. “Having  been a donor, I can tell you donors want to see people,” Stockton says. “I am old enough to remember the days when staff taking your blood had time to talk to you. “Doesn’t happen anymore, to CBS you are a piece of meat giving blood, you could be a bag.”

Lately CBS has been in the news because of its endorsement of Canadian Plasma Resources, a private for-profit company that wants to pay for plasma donations.  The Saskatchewan company is eying Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for expansion. Organizations such as Bloodwatch and public healthcare advocates in the Maritimes have strongly opposed the introduction of private for-profit clinics while we have an effective not-for-profit blood service already in place. Paying for donations is asking for trouble, they believe. But concerns around the quality of our blood supply go deeper. “Workers in our locals fear for the safety of this blood system altogether,” Davidson warns. “CBS is more concerned about cost savings than about the safety of the blood supply. They have  pared the organization down so much that all resilience and safety is removed, and we are going right back to 1997,” Davidson says.

“CBS tries to make its operation as lean as possible,” he says. “We cautioned them to make sure that there are no system failures such as the Krever enquiry identified. But they are continually watering it down. It’s all about dollars and cents for them.” When front line CBS workers are concerned about safety, then provincial Health ministers who fund CBS to the tune of $1 billion per year should listen, says Davidson. “We call upon the responsible ministers to step up and pay attention. We need to raise the alarm that things are not good.”

Regardless of source, it’s important to ensure the safety and security of supply for patients who need blood and blood products. Currently, CBS collects about 200,000 litres of plasma annually. That is enough to produce only about 22 per cent of blood products such as intravenous immunoglobulin, which is used to treat a growing number of immune disorders. That product is purchased from the United States and Switzerland.

Currently, there are no manufacturers of blood products in Canada. However, both Green Cross Biotherapeutics and Therapure Biopharma are getting into the business. Within five years, CBS hopes to increase collection markedly to about 500,000 litres a year, with the use of dedicated plasma collection centres. But CBS has no plans to pay donors, other than the traditional cookies and juice. Nor does it plan to buy plasma from other providers, such as Canadian Plasma Resources.In fact, what Canadian Plasma Resources plans to do with the plasma it has collected is unclear as it does not have license from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which means it essentially can’t sell its plasma in the United States. What is clear, however, is that there is a lot of action in the blood business; as opportunities arise, we must be careful to not repeat the errors at the root of the tainted-blood debacle. What policy makers need to do now is come up with a clear, coherent position on issues such as paying for plasma and domestic production of blood products rather than grasping at every shiny bauble that comes along.

Kat Lanteigne, executive director for BloodWatch.org and writer of the play Tainted based on three-years of research about the tainted blood scandal, travelled to Alberta to help spread the message about concerns about private, donor-paid plasma collection. Lanteigne said these types of clinics had started to show up in Ontario in the last few years. "This is a big-pharma push," she said. "If they can build a clinic and get a licence from Health Canada then they can open without the province's permission." She said that the private sale and collection of blood and plasma introduces risk into the system. She also dispelled another myth that plasma is being imported into the country. She said that is not the case, as about 70 per cent of the drugs produced from plasma is what is being imported. When successful in the fight to get Ontario to legislate against private, donor-paid plasma collection at the end of 2014, and because Quebec has a similar law, Lanteigne said they made the mistake of thinking that because the largest provinces in Canada had done this, the rest of the provinces would follow suit.

Instead, as part of one of her first decisions, the new federal Liberal Health Minister approved CPR opening a clinic in Saskatchewan. Lanteigne says the Saskatchewan government, led by Premier Brad Wall, then approved the private, donor-paid plasma collection business to open in Saskatoon, "in between a pawn shop and a pay-day loan company." "This collection facility is a blood broker. They are literally a middle man Ñ a source to get profits. "We're asking the provinces and territories to pass voluntary blood donation acts which adds blood and plasma to their existing human tissue acts ..." Lanteigne explained. There is a lot of information on the BloodWatch.org website about the issue, including an informative timeline. The organization also has a Heart Watch rating system. Alberta currently has three hearts and Lanteigne would like to see that increase to five. "Saskatchewan has broken our hearts," she adds.

Kim Storebo, CUPE Local 46 president who works with Canadian Blood Services (CBS), also spoke at the event. She said CUPE supports a public, voluntary-based blood system in Canada, adding CBS needs to increase the number of its own plasma collection sites. The organization has been slowly closing locations since 2012. "There is no evidence the collection of plasma from paid donors will create self-sufficiency," she said. "Under no circumstances should there be payment of blood plasma donors with cash or cash-in-kind equivalents." The union wants to see blood and plasma collection remain the sole responsibility of Canadian Blood Services and for the organization to expand its plasma collection and its work hours and ensure stable and consistent hours for its employees. As part of the wrap-up of the Alberta tour officials with FOM, BloodWatch.org and CUPE presented an online SumOfUs petition with more than 15,000 signatures to provincial health minister Sarah Hoffman asking for all provincial governments to "implement legislation that ensures no for-profit, donor-paid blood plasma collection clinics are allowed to operate in Canada." Azocar assured those at the meetings that Friends of Medicare would continue to lobby the Alberta government this fall and next spring during the Legislature sittings.

Other unions and community groups who presented to the board were OPSEU, eight blood services workers from PEI who have been on strike for 9 months, the Canadian Health Coalition, Friends of Medicare and Blood Watch.