MPP condemns Sudbury LifeLabs closure, warns of northern health-care erosion

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Northern MPP warns of health care risk as Sudbury LifeLabs lab closes

Northern MPPs want LifeLabs closure reversed

Sudbury fights LifeLabs closure, warns of patient delays in the North

Northern Ontario MPPs are rallying against the impending closure of the LifeLabs’ specimen processing laboratory in Sudbury, a move they assert will jeopardize regional healthcare access and eliminate local jobs.

Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas revealed she learned of the closure through a whistleblower, noting it will cause 40 staff members to lose their jobs this spring and fundamentally undermine northern Ontario’s healthcare services.

“Stop this at the core of it. LifeLabs Diagnostic Quest, the American company has a contract. They sign a contract with the provincial government in order to be paid. It is our taxes. It is the provincial government who pays the bill,” said Gélinas.

Retired manager predicts service decline

Jeff Morton, a retired LifeLabs Sudbury manager, called the closure disappointing but unsurprising. He said the provincial government missed a critical opportunity by not purchasing LifeLabs when it was for sale in 2024, a decision he believes cedes control to a for-profit system ill-equipped for northern needs.

“We’re missing that lab reform, when we’re missing the government looking at those opportunities and we’re just accepting that we’re now going to be held hostage by a for-profit system and an external system within the hospital that’s not equipped to deal with this,” said Morton.

“We will never get to maybe where we should be, rather than where we are.”

He further warned that sending specimens south for testing would create a ripple effect, potentially leading to reduced service hours as the company seeks to cut courier costs.

“I think the temptation is going to be over time to say, geez, you know, the afternoon is slower, so let’s try to get as much in the morning, and let’s limit some hours of accessibility for those people to reduce our courier costs further down the road,” he said.

Government ‘not responsible’

In response, the province’s health minister, Sylvia Jones, said that while the government is not responsible for LifeLabs’ operations, it is acting to grow the healthcare workforce.

“We have expanded the Learn and Stay Grant, which covers the tuition and educational expenses for students in a healthcare program in exchange for a term of work in their area of study, to include medical laboratory technologists,” she said.

Of 180 students in the grant at Cambrian College, 106 are medical laboratory technologists.

Cambrian College’s Rachel Steels indicated the direct impact on students has been minimal.

“The two partial placements that were at LifeLabs were absorbed by other labs in the community that were already completing the other portion of the placement for those students,” she saidl.

“So the impact is actually fairly small.”

Growing centralization

Local MPPs, however, dismiss the government’s workforce boasts as ironic, given the elimination of local lab jobs. They argue the closure accelerates a dangerous centralization of medical testing in Toronto.

“Those 40 workers are worried about where they can continue to have an income and then you have a government who brags about, oh, but, you know, like, you can become a medical laboratory technologist in northern Ontario and never be able to find a job,” Gélinas said.

“That’s the part that they forget to say, because we’re centralizing all of the analysis in Toronto.”

Opposition to the closure continues to solidify across the north. A petition opposing the shuttering of the lab had gathered just under 900 digital signatures as of Monday afternoon.