LifeLabs should be made into a publicly owned service

With lots of buzz circulating before and in the wake of the April 28 federal election, there’s been a piece of important news that may have slipped many Canadians’ notice.

LifeLabs employees, represented by the BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), have been on strike since February over failure to negotiate changes to wages and benefits in line with the cost of living.

The current owners of LifeLabs, a private company contracted by the B.C. government to provide diagnostic laboratory services, are the U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics. It purchased the business from the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) in July 2024 for $1.35 billion.

For these above reasons, the BCGEU has asked Premier David Eby to follow through on his declaration to terminate provincial government contracts with U.S. companies and nullify Quest Diagnostics’ ownership of LifeLabs, as reported by CHEK News.

Members of the BCGEU have criticized the fact that “too many of our public health dollars are being turned over to corporate profits.” This concern is particularly applicable to a corporation that is headquartered in a country whose relationship with Canada has recently turned very bitter.

The question of why such a vital health service is privately owned by a publicly traded Fortune 500 corporation is certainly a pertinent one, especially considering we live in a country that has always prided itself for having publicly funded and available health care, unlike its southern neighbour.

Reliance on any for-profit organization, foreign or domestic, to provide a public service like health care (even if it is something specialized like diagnostic laboratories) is simply asking for some sort of trouble — even more so if said for-profit owner is beholden to shareholders like Quest Diagnostics is.

Health care is made into an option for investment firms and hedge fund managers to add into their clients’ portfolios. Thus, priorities are diverted away from what is actually necessary — providing care to patients — and towards what is ultimately superfluous: pleasing shareholders and their pocketbooks.

While I agree with the BCGEU’s call to drop Quest Diagnostics as LifeLabs’ owner, where I diverge is in the belief that a change in ownership is not enough, especially if LifeLabs were to switch to a private, profit-seeking Canadian owner.

Instead, the laboratory should be fully integrated into the public health-care system as a Crown corporation. Laboratory services are already provided by public health authorities, LifeLabs is a contracted provider to cover for where other laboratory services cannot.

However, the expansion of public health-care services is a societal must because it relies on taxpayers, whom the public health-care system directly treats, not shareholders, who are unlikely to ever set foot in a public health facility.

In the absence of the profit motive, there must be a public motive for treating patients that is solely interested in delivering care. This has never been more important in an era where the U.S.’ private health-care sector has been shown to be so ineffective and haphazard in design that it makes Canadians all the more thankful for our slightly less haphazard system.

To that end, I say that LifeLabs should no longer be under the ownership of Quest Diagnostics and instead be administered by the province.

This kills two birds with one stone. It removes the foreign corporation from the equation and places a vital service into the domestic and public sphere of control. It also strengthens the integrity of diagnostic laboratory services by making the people the stakeholders of a not-for-profit public necessity.

We cannot allow any type of profit-seeking mentality to direct any facet of our universal health-care system. Hopefully, at the behest of the BCGEU, Eby will make good and cancel the Quest Diagnostics contract once and for all.