Health Canada conducted inspections of the Grifols plasma donation centre in Whitby, Ont., in early 2025 before it opened.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
Health Canada says it will inspect three Grifols private plasma collection facilities that opened in Ontario last year without inspections, amid concerns about deficiencies the regulator has found at other locations.
Grifols opened five for-profit plasma collection sites in Ontario in 2025: one in Whitby, one in Hamilton, one in Cambridge and two in Toronto.
Health Canada conducted inspections of the Whitby and Hamilton locations in early 2025 before they opened, but as The Globe and Mail reported on Monday, the other three locations were licensed without being inspected.
Grifols, the only major commercial collector of plasma with 17 sites across Canada, has come under scrutiny in recent months after the deaths of two donors in Winnipeg and some Health Canada inspections that have uncovered deficiencies, such as staff not being properly trained on how to deal with alarms on donation machines.
Canadians’ plasma is now a liquid asset. Is that ethical? Chris Hannay donated to learn more
Health Canada has said it could not establish a link between the deaths in October and January and the plasma donation process, but the family of one deceased donor has called for a new investigation because of inconsistencies between the autopsy report and government records.
Health Canada spokesperson André Gagnon told The Globe on Monday evening that inspectors are planning to visit Grifols’ locations in Cambridge and Toronto “in the coming weeks.”
He said that would be in line with Health Canada’s licensing approach to inspect all new blood-collection sites within 12 months of their opening.
He said new locations are not required to have an inspection before they open when the operating company already has an existing licence.
Grifols’ Cambridge site opened in June, 2025, while the North York location, in northern Toronto, opened in July, 2025, and the Etobicoke location, in western Toronto, opened in August, 2025. That means it has almost been 12 months since the three sites opened.
Grifols told The Globe it welcomes any Health Canada inspections that may be scheduled.
Plasma is a protein-rich fluid found in blood that is collected and processed into medicine.
Barcelona-headquartered Grifols operates in Canada as part of a partnership signed with Canadian Blood Services in 2022. Grifols pays donors, while CBS does not. A government-funded charity, CBS spends $1-billion annually procuring plasma-derived medicines, including from Grifols.
Ontario law bans paying blood donors, but it contains an exemption for CBS to pay donors if necessary. The Ontario government has allowed Grifols to operate in the province as an “agent” of CBS for the purposes of the law.
Ontario NDP MPP France Gélinas, her party’s health critic, said that if the provincial government is going to give Grifols a legal pass, then at a minimum it needs to manage any potential risks to donors’ health and ensure Health Canada operates pro-actively.
“Waiting until tragic fatalities, kidney injuries, and widespread regulatory non-compliances, is not good enough, it is not acceptable,” she said.
Why Canada spends $1-billion a year on drugs made from blood plasma
She said she would rather see blood and plasma collected voluntarily through CBS and Grifols locations shut down.
CBS has said the partnership is the best way to increase the amount of plasma collected in Canada so that less of the plasma-derived medicine taken by Canadian patients comes from donors in other countries.
Health Canada conducted a virtual inspection of Grifols’ head office in Oakville, Ont., starting Jan. 28, to interview staff and examine corporate policies such as record-keeping and training. Health Canada found the company non-compliant and on April 1 announced conditions on its licences, including limits on the number of donors that can be seen at a time and improved staff supervision.
Deaths connected to plasma donation are rare. Health Canada said it has records of three such deaths since 2016, all of which were in Winnipeg. That includes the deaths in October and January, which were at clinics operated by Grifols, and a third death in 2018 that occurred before Grifols was operating in Canada.