Imagine legislation so bad that it creates shortages in essential health-care treatments, forces taxpayers to subsidize international companies and chases away new investment. This became reality in 2017 when Alberta’s New Democrats outlawed compensating Albertans for their blood donations. Fortunately, United Conservative MLA Tany Yao wants to change this with his private member’s bill.

“A secure supply of plasma is a cornerstone of a modern twenty-first century health care system,” said Yao. “The repeal of the Voluntary Blood Donations Act will help patients by making our plasma supply less dependent on international supply which can be unreliable.”

Currently, Albertans can voluntarily donate blood and blood plasma (plasma makes up about 55 per cent of your blood) for free, but it’s illegal to compensate donors to encourage a greater local supply of plasma.

The result: Alberta is heavily dependent on plasma therapies that are imported from other countries such as the United States. The kicker: those American plasma donors are being paid.

 “We’d love to have everybody donating freely without compensation, if that were possible, but it’s not,” said David Page national director of health policy at the Canadian Hemophilia Society.

Just last year Canadian Blood Services sounded the alarm about a shortage of immune globulin, which is one of the life-saving medicines created from blood plasma. This caused real-life hardships for patients who rely on these treatments like Kate van der Meer.

“I had to continue traveling to the hospital every three weeks, and struggle to care for my three young children while recovering from each intravenous infusion. This continued until the end of September 2019,” said van der Meer referencing a subcutaneous immune globulin shortage in May 2019. “Patients have suffered because of our apathy, and because of the Voluntary Blood Donations Act.”

In total, Canada only supplies about 13.5 per cent of the plasma needed for the production of IG and other plasma therapies Canadian patients need. The rest comes mainly from the U.S. where donors are paid.

That means our tax dollars are being used to pay U.S. companies while our own government prohibits us from paying Alberta donors, putting patients like Kate at risk. In 2018 alone, Alberta taxpayers paid about $145 million for blood plasma products.

Allowing Albertans to be paid for their blood plasma could significantly reduce taxpayer costs. First, Health Canada found that voluntary collections are about two to four times more expensive than paid collections, due to differences in labour and advertising costs. That right, it’s cheaper for taxpayers to buy foreign blood plasma than it is for us to get it for free from Canadians.

Second, CBS is inefficient. It plans to collect 600,000 litres of plasma from 40 new donation centres with an operating budget of $247 million. That’s $412 per litre. The company Canadian Plasma Resources that pays donors in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick publicly offered their plasma to CBS for $166 per litre.

On top of the extra taxpayer costs, Alberta is currently losing out on a crucial opportunity to diversify the economy and attract much-needed investment. If the ban on paying Albertans for blood plasma is lifted, CPR expects to invest tens of millions of dollars and create more than 200 jobs, the company told the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through email correspondence.

Professor Peter Jaworski laid down the options facing Alberta when he testified before the Alberta government’s standing committee on private members’ bills.

“Alberta can either repeal the Voluntary Blood Donations Act and permit compensating Albertans for plasma, benefiting Canadian donors and patients, or Alberta will forever pay Americans for their plasma, imposing higher costs and insecurity in the supply of these life-saving medicines,” said Jaworski.

The NDP’s ban on compensating Albertans for their blood plasma was a mistake. Fortunately, Yao’s private member’s will significantly reduce risk for future patients relying on essential blood plasma treatments, lower taxpayer costs and help our economy.

This column was originally published in the Edmonton Sun on July 31, 2020.