Ontario Health Coalition

NEW: Health Coalition Issues Open Letter to Health Minister to Stop Transfer of Lab Testing by Quest/Lifelabs to U.S.

June 15, 2026

Dear Minister Jones,

We are writing to ask that you stop LifeLabs/Quest from sending Ontario patients laboratory specimens to Quest’s reference laboratories in the United States and restore our public hospital outpatient laboratories. As you know, in August 2024, Quest completed its acquisition of LifeLabs. Since then, Quest, an American multinational, has been attempting to cut back services to Ontario’s patients. In Sudbury, they attempted to close their laboratory processing facility entirely and have now reduced its staffing by half. From January to March, they cancelled afternoon hours at the Kenora lab collection centre. Currently, they are beginning to move lab tests that are done in Ontario’s hospitals to the United States.

For decades, these reference laboratory tests have been performed in Ontario’s hospitals. Shifting them to the United States raises serious patient privacy and specimen quality concerns, delays results, harms the efficiency and independence of Ontario’s medical laboratory system, transfers more Ontario health care dollars to the United States and reduces income to our hospitals.

On March 9, 2026, LifeLabs/Quest informed “external laboratories” that reference laboratory tests will be transitioned to Quest Diagnostics. What they call “external laboratories” are Ontario’s public hospital medical laboratories that have been routinely used for many years by LifeLabs to test samples from Ontario patients that LifeLabs did not have the ability to process. Quest’s reference laboratories are all in the United States. Quest’s March 9 memo states that phase one of this transfer of tests to the United States will begin on April 6 with phases two and three following in the period May to July of this year.

Quest’s actions will:

⚫ Reduce the protection of Ontario patients’ medical data;
⚫ Take financial resources away from hospitals;
⚫ Make Ontario’s medical laboratory processing system less efficient by removing needed volume;
⚫ Send more Ontario tax dollars to the United States, and;
⚫ Jeopardize sample quality by increasing transportation and turnaround time and by making it harder for Ontario hospital patients to access needed reference tests.

In our view, these actions by Quest demonstrate a lack of concern about delivering high quality medical laboratory services in Ontario. Maximizing corporate income by bleeding income from Ontario’s health care system and patients should not be the driving force of our medical laboratory system. Quest’s contract to provide outpatient medical laboratory services in Ontario must be cancelled as soon as possible and your government must restore all outpatient lab testing to the control of local public hospitals.

Transferring the community laboratory work to the hospitals will make a more integrated health system and ensure public – and Canadian domestic — control over these vital services. It will be cheaper, provide better quality and faster care, strengthen the services within the local hospitals and increase accessibility for patients to needed health services.

Please provide us (and the public) with all contracts between the Ontario government and Quest/LifeLabs.

A link to a copy of Quest’s March 9, 2026 memo “Changes to Referred-out Testing – Phase 1 of 3” can be found here:https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/Changes-to-Referred-out-Testing-–-Phase-1-of-3.pdf

Link to printable version of open letterhttps://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/letter-to-Minister-re-Quest-for-media-release-web-vrsn.pdf

www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca

A lineup of expert speakers will show you how to find health care data on system capacity and performance, local service providers, the labour force, long-term care, and corporations in Ontario and across Canada.

This conference is geared to those who want to know how to find health data which is often difficult to access, including academics, students, journalists, policy/research staff from non-profit and advocacy groups, union researchers, political researchers, and community members who want to strengthen public health care research in your local areas. It is about data, not policy: how to find it, what data sets are readily available, and how to access information with and without Freedom of Information requests.

Join us live on Zoom from 9 am to 5 pm on Thursday, June 25. The cost is $100 for full day access and conference materials. Please register by noon on Wed 24 here: https://square.link/u/eUHimpKV. See all the workshops here: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/event-virtual-health-research-conference-via-zoom/

Speakers in order of appearance:
⚫ Kevin Skerrett, Ottawa Health Coalition, Director of the Financialization Lab at Carleton University, Board member OMERS AC, former researcher at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Research Officer at the International Labour Organization, and Scholar in Residence at York University.

🔴 Saul Melamed, Client Affairs Manager for Ontario, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)

⚫ Katie Scrim, Manager, Special Analytical Projects and Census Labour and Commuting, Statistics Canada

🔴 Isabelle Levesque, Assistant Director, Centre for Population Health Data (CPHD), Statistics Canada

⚫Ross Sutherland, chair, Ontario Health Coalition, retired Registered Nurse, author of “False Positive: Private Profit in Canada’s Medical Laboratories”.

🔴 Natalie Mehra, executive director, Ontario Health Coalition, author of numerous reports and book chapters on health policy, privatization, organizing for social change, equity and the growing gap in income and wealth, human and disability rights.

⚫ Doug Allan, Research Representative, CUPE SCFP, author of Leftwords blog, author of numerous reports on health care policy, budgets and capacity.

🔴 Salah Shadir, OHC Operations and Administration Director

⚫ Marzian Alam, Director of Research, Ontario NDP Caucus

🔴 Andrew Longhurst, senior researcher and political economist, with a focus on health policy, at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His work has been published in academic journals and by research institutes, including Canadian Journal on Aging, Political Geography, the CCPA, and the Parkland Institute.

⚫ Joanna Frketich, award-winning health reporter for The Hamilton Spectator with more than 20 years experience covering hospitals, medical research, public health issues and more.

🔴 Shalom Schachter, LL.B., Rabbi, former Interest Arbitration and Long-Term Care Regulation Lead, Ontario Nurses’ Association and long-term care researcher for CUPE, Vice President of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors for Jewish Renewal, member of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, representative to various interfaith advocacy groups including the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition.

Access to health care is a fundamental human right. These photos are from the protest yesterday. Thank you to Danielle Rose Morash for sending them to me. We should all support and amplify the efforts of these First Nations in every way we can.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DdKyS3n5m/

Featuring Statistics Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), experienced researchers, journalists, authors, and more:

Whether you want to track the rise of the private clinics or surgical wait times, join our one-day virtual research conference. Expert speakers will give you the tools you need to hone your skills and find data to strengthen public health care research.

Join us live on Zoom from 9 am to 5 pm on Thursday, June 25. The cost is $100 for full day access and conference materials.

Please register here: https://square.link/u/eUHimpKV

See the workshops here: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/event-one-day-health-research-conference-via-zoom/

Speakers in order of appearance:
⚫ Kevin Skerrett, Ottawa Health Coalition, Director of the Financialization Lab at Carleton University, Board member OMERS AC, former researcher at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Research Officer at the International Labour Organization, and Scholar in Residence at York University.

🔴 Shannon Weir-Seeley, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)

⚫ Katie Scrim, Statistics Canada

🔴 Ross Sutherland, chair, Ontario Health Coalition, retired Registered Nurse, author of “False Positive: Private Profit in Canada’s Medical Laboratories”.

⚫ Natalie Mehra, executive director, Ontario Health Coalition, author of numerous reports and book chapters on health policy, privatization, organizing for social change, equity and the growing gap in income and wealth, human and disability rights.

🔴 Doug Allan, Research Representative, CUPE SCFP, author of Leftwords blog, author of numerous reports on health care policy, budgets and capacity.

⚫ Salah Shadir, OHC Operations and Administration Director

🔴 Marzian Alam, Director of Research, Ontario NDP Caucus

⚫ Andrew Longhurst, senior researcher and political economist, with a focus on health policy, at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His work has been published in academic journals and by research institutes, including Canadian Journal on Aging, Political Geography, the CCPA, and the Parkland Institute.

🔴 Joanna Frketich, award-winning health reporter for The Hamilton Spectator with more than 20 years experience covering hospitals, medical research, public health issues and more.

⚫ Shalom Schachter, LL.B., Rabbi, former Interest Arbitration and Long-Term Care Regulation Lead, Ontario Nurses’ Association and long-term care researcher for CUPE, Vice President of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors for Jewish Renewal, member of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, representative to various interfaith advocacy groups including the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition.

Ontario Health Coalition Research Conference - Ontario Health Coalition description

Join us for a one-day Health Research Conference online via Zoom

Featuring: Expert speakers from Statistics Canada & the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), political researchers, corporate researchers, health policy researchers, journalists and authors, and more. Full list of speakers is linked below.

🗓️ When: 9AM-5PM, Thursday June 25

📍 Where: Live on Zoom

Cost: $100 (Full day access + conference materials)

Register here: https://square.link/u/eUHimpKV

The landscape of Ontario’s health care system is shifting faster than ever. From the rise of private clinics to the latest data on hospital staffing and wait times, staying informed isn't just an advantage, it’s a necessity.

We’re bringing together experienced researchers and front line experts to break down the latest findings, navigate the current structure of health care information, long term care, and public health information, and discuss how and where to find the data and details that can be used to strengthen research on public health care in Ontario, and across the country.

The exciting agenda and full list of speakers can be found here: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/event-one-day-health-research-conference-via-zoom/

Don’t just watch the headlines. Understand the data behind them.

Register here: https://square.link/u/eUHimpKV. After registering and making a payment, a unique Zoom link will be sent to you for the conference.

A huge and heartfelt thank you for helping to make the march and protest on Thursday as big as possible. 8,000 of you turned out to send a clear message to Doug Ford that we will not let his government privatize our public hospitals. If you weren't there, you will see. It was HUGE. In this post are a few photos from the event. Many more are in our Facebook album here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=ontariohealth&set=a.1444569317715859

You can help -- here is some quick follow up for everyone to do, please! Tell Premier Doug Ford and your local MPP to stop privatizing our public hospitals and health care. That means: stop the private clinics and fund the operating rooms and diagnostics in our public hospitals that are underused, stop forcing the hospitals into cuts, stop privatizing all the health care services they are privatizing. It is a simple message:

⚫️ Email Premier Doug Ford at: https://www.ontario.ca/form/send-premier-message click on "Issue", choose whether or not you want a reply, then click "proceed to step 2" and type in your message. Or you can email [email protected], phone & mailing address: https://www.ontario.ca/page/premier

🔴 Also, please email your local MPP (Members of Provincial Parliament) here: https://www.ola.org/en/members/current If you don't know who your MPP is, just put your own postal code where it says "address and postal code" and it will give you your MPP.

⚫️ If you aren't already an Ontario Health Coalition member, would you consider becoming one? The memberships and donations - especially monthly donations - matter hugely. We are grateful for whatever you are able to do and if you cannot, please, no pressure. Here is the link: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/donate-now/

Again, the biggest thank you ever. It was a tremendous turnout and an amazing day after LOTS of work. Thank you so much for everything you do to protect our public health care for all.

Photo credit for second last picture: Alex Lisman
Photo credit for last picture: Tian Qio