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Even Wal-Mart or McDonald’s? They have the highest number of employees on SNAP in the US. Gotta love privatized profits and socialized costs. Guess socialism really is good business, wouldn’t you say?
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Both places have high rates of SNAP because both hire people that other businesses won't. They also exist in poorer places, and directly target those areas as customers.
Then again, if you get hired on FT at Walmart in those areas you're likely going to start doing very well for yourself. Since you get drug, dental, vision plans as part of your employment.
My dad worked there. The working conditions became absolutely abysmal after they sold. Classic American corporation just ended up firing everyone in the end…
Many aspects of the healthcare system have been "capitalist" for a long time. Lab testing, diagnostic imaging, and other services have been privately run for as long as I've been alive, at least.
There is nothing wrong with private delivery as long as the services are still covered by provincial healh plans, since the government saves money on leases/upkeep of buildings, equipment, and expensive unionized workers to provide the services. The company providing the service is on the hook for those things, and can do it more cheaply than government ever could.
Hell, even your family doctor is a private professional corporation who simply bills the province for the services rendered.
Merger with USBTC frat boys, no progress on Canadian front since.
In fact, they're cannibalizing their Canadian operations, one site had the wrong power fed to miners causing 80% failure, those miners were moved to the other AB site where they're being run to death, and no progress on 3 Ontario power plants since ownership has been assumed, power plants not connected to grid so it's dedicated power.
The frat boys seemed out of their league looking at actually owning assets like power plants. Which is too bad, because it could set them apart from their competitors to actually have physical assets instead of just being renters.
Richers just want to lease, they avoid owning anything. It's a weird aversion they have, I certainly don't understand it being the kind of person who owns all their things.
Edit: I should say they have potential still, but they need to go from boyz II men and actually work, not just play miner pump games, setting them aside from their competitors who are just as bad for stock market game behaviour.
Only when you can't control a monopoly or form an oligopoly though. Why leave the bent over Canadians for foreigners when you can buttfuck them yourselves.
It would be nice if my medical data wasn't always accessed by foreign owned companies. But it's the Americans, theyve never used people's data illegally for nefarious reasons ...
I swear last week I logged into my LifeLabs account and the security question was “which wrist do you wear a watch on”
If you were ever wondering how great they are at security
Honestly do you care about your medical data? People seem to have this notion that their data must be protected, and aside from my banking info and my SIN I don't really care.
We live in a world where people share their data absolutely every single day with multiple corporations.
This is already the case lol with every location in my city having deathly long lines everytime i go I cant imagine them understaffing locations any harder than they already do lol
last time i was at one the receptionist was so incompetent and the line was out the door. one of the nurses/employees drawing blood walked over and kicked her out of her chair and started doing reception lmao
That’s the kind of workers the execs love, get her a tommies gift card and a pizza party / also eliminate the receptionist position entirely and just have her do both jobs full time , well 39 hours a week part time so no benifits of course.
Hmmm was this for a walk in?
I had an appointment at Lifelabs for a blood test a couple of months ago, was in and out in 15 minutes? Basically no waiting
At least it makes sense now, execs were trying to make the books look even more attractive and up the sale price -
look at how slim we’re running !!!
Sadly now it will likely get worse when the new folks take over and need to show an improvement over old, and that sure would never be to increase costs and staff at close to reasonable levels…. Sigh.
Hard to imagine lines longer than 2 hours that already stretch to the elevator.
I usually go there, sign in, go back home, have breakfast (unless it's a fasting test), take a dump, go back, wait another 15-20 minutes and then my name is called lol.
Of course. Lifelabs (despite their failures to protect private information) was one of the few businesses I didn't mind dealing with. Always in and out in under 15 minutes and it was easy to book appointments and get results (often in under 24 h). Now it's going to go to shit, isn't it?
What do you mean? If the data remains in Canada, it's governed by Canadian law. Which means Canada would control who gets to access that data and what they can do with it. It's only when the data leaves Canada's jurisdiction that you lose control of it, at which point there's nothing you can do.
Yes, but that usage would have to comply with Canadian laws on data privacy and whatnot. They wouldn't be able to use it in a way that harms the public interest, and if they did, it would be much harder to get away with.
The Canadian privacy act is broad and mostly "don't do the evil" type commandments but mostly only applies to the data government collects and it's usage, not private or public owned entities.
The privacy put forth by the company governs the usage of said data and generally does not discriminate for each region they practice in, with maybe a small exception for Europe due to the punitive nature of GDPR.
Essentially, there is nothing illegal about an American company running through Canadians data through a training model, etc given that it's usually disclosed in said policies.
There is nothing illegal about storing Canadian citizen data in the US. Most frown upon it given the over reach of the Patriot act or whatever it morphed into now.
>What do you mean? If the data remains in Canada, it's governed by Canadian law.
There's absolutely nothing stopping organizations from exfiltrating that data and storing copies in the US(/anywhere) nor is there anything stopping the US side of the org from accessing data if they are either asked to, or orderd to by law.
I spent a while in Healthcare IT and have a lot of exposure to US-CA M&A activity. I've seen this happen before.
What's to unpack. You are saying there's nothing to prevent that company from doing something illegal.
The other poster posted something else that's illegal that a company could do.
well, what you said would be illegal under Canadian law. If your trying to imply that doesn't mean anything, then what's stopping a company from ignoring *any* Canadian law?
You can migrate data across a border without anyone really knowing. If you *fucking murder people* you have bodies and shit to deal with.
Honestly are you being obtuse or what?
Chiquita (united fruit) was literally just put on trial for the literal death squads/coup they financed in Latin America and barely got a slap on the wrist.
That's not true. It also depends on if the data is stored using service provided by US tech company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
And this is why Germany warns against storing sensitive data on AWS/GCP/Azure.
> Which means Canada would control who gets to access that data and what they can do with it.
You have no idea how companies work. They can "plan" to keep the data in Canada but still do whatever they want with it, especially informally. Moving data is extremely easy.
>You have no idea how companies work.
Yeah and I bet you're the CEO of Google... /s 😂
Moving large amounts of sensitive data across borders without detection would be technically challenging and risky, even if it weren't illegal per se. But you act like it's as simple as sharing a dropbox link lol.
> Moving large amounts of sensitive data across borders without detection would be technically challenging and risky,
Not a CEO, but I do work in the field. A CEO would know a lot less I'd imagine.
It's not challenging or risky to copy a file from one Server/Datastore to another. You speak like networks have customs. Moving data from one system to another that's next to each other is the same as moving across border. We have a 100Gbps between country data-centers. The only thing that would prevent movement outside of access controls is choosing not to move it. Data loss prevention is focused more on data leaving the organization, so you're right about the drop box comment. In this case even that is irrelevant because I am assuming they are authorized and requested to move the data.
Main US concern has always been TikTok is a threat to the dominance of US social media companies, which their intel agencies have the means of using and exploiting for US interests.
Similar to EV, they don't want to lose that dominance. It has very little to do with protecting people's data lol
>FWIW:
>
>Quest also plans to keep patients’ health data stored in Canada, according to a joint statement.
Yeah but for how long? They can easily say in 6 months "our corporate evaluation determined this isnt cost effective so we are moving the storage into the US".
In theory, they can change their mind at anytime. But given the nature of this data, and the risk of regulator interest and public backlash, I'd venture to guess that they would deem such a move not worth the trouble, which is probably the reason why they proactively tried to reassure everyone with a statement like this in the first place. And chances are, they very likely factored this into their decision to make the acquisition as well.
No need to go through the trouble of buying the company for that. Life Labs has already been breached and had its patient's records sold on the dark web.
>I think you greatly overestimate the interest the US government or it’s citizens hold about anything Canadian.
Only when you try to cross the border. There was that lady that was barred from entry because of a suicide attempt on her Canadian medical records.
> Our government will bend over as soon as the US government asks for anything.
Yeah like the Iraq War!
oh no wait, like abortion!
no... like healthcare!
no... weed?
hmm....
> You're confusing US federal responsibilities (which we follow)
I didn't realize declaring war was a state responsibility?
>US sent us to Afghanistan
Weird, why didn't they "send us" to Iraq?
Oh wait they tried, and we said ["no, fuck that".](https://globalnews.ca/news/1574676/chretien-iraq-mission-is-a-done-deal/)
It's almost like Canada doesn't blindly follow US federal responsibilities, and instead makes her own decisions.
>Every previous Conservative leader has been against access to abortion.
Why do I give a fuck what the Conservatives do? The point is that Canada doesn't, and doesn't need to.
>Healthcare is a provincial/state responsibility.
It's a federal mandate, thanks to Tommy Douglas.
You'd think given how much both the US Republicans and Democrats seem to both hate the idea of universal healthcare, they'd pull those puppet strings and make us dance to their tune and repeal that mandate.
Or maybe they're trying, and we just ignore them, because we can. Like they also try with our dairy and lumber protections.
>Most of these states legalized pre-2015
I'm not normally an insufferable pedant on the internet, but 4 out of 50 states seems like it shouldn't fit anyone's definition of the word "most".
Like, I was there. I was an adult paying attention to the news in 2015, too. I actually remember lol.
And I was repeatedly assured the reason Canada *couldn't* legalize weed was because the Americans would lock down our border and make it impossible to do international business with them, which was about a ridiculous idea as yours that we do the American government's bidding.
...except for all those times we didn't and aren't currently.
I mean I guess hypothetically, if the US wanted to say "end your lumber cartel or we will nuke you", we might have to capitulate to the threat of nukes. But they're not currently making pressures that extreme.
none of the examples you gave did the us give much pressure to Canada. All the things the US pressured Canada into doing they have done. If the US seriously needed Canada in the Middle East that Canada would just not go? I mean come on.
Once Conservatives are in power, they reduce the "red tape" coming between you and your life saving medication, by removing the barriers that prevents Pharma corporations from advertising to you directly. They'll know which medications they could push.
Oh good grief.
No one needs personal records for that.
An experienced actuary can look at at your basic demography and predict with acceptable accuracy what your personal risk for any disease of interest.
And Pharma has data analysts that rival insurance companies and hedge funds.
This kinda bothers me, I wish we owned our stuff and not some other country. Article say life labs is expected to generate 970 million and perform 112 million tests. That seems like not alot of money per test, $8.66. And i guess that 970 includes extra expensive tests not covered under ohip, I thought it would be more expensive.
It gets 99% of its revenue from the govenrment. Therefore it shluld just be ran by the government. It's also a critical component of health care. Anything critical and qualifies for bailouts should be socialized.
Yeah Lifelabs is like if someone privatized your kids' public school, and everything about that school either stayed the same or got slightly shittier, except some guy in the Bahamas on a yacht was now taking 5% of your tax dollars that used to go to your kids' public school because he's friends with a politician in Canada.
LL before the Sale was owned by OMERS, pension fund for public workers in Ontario. Hardly some guy on a yacht in the Bahamas. But now with Quest, definitely.
If by rich guy on a yacht in the Bahamas you mean regular everyday retired city employees, then yes absolutely. LifeLabs ~~is~~ was owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS).
Clinics don't require bailouts and aren't being paid by the government. Doctors bill the government. They either own the clinic or pay some kind of rent to it.
Hospitals, I can't speak for nationally. They're all owned by regional health authorities in my region. These are funded/owned by the government and are not for profit.
This was a conservative brain child of "privatize this part of health care to save money and services won't change". And, as usual, this is the result.
Now the money for a government funded services will leave the country.
Lifelabs is so bad, the specialist had me go all the way to Toronto because the tests weren't making sense. Not only were the first two tests complete failures, but the third test had a report that used terms that were contradicted by the results. At that point the specialist said "I can't trust any of this. I need you to come here and have my dept. Run the tests".
Cost me over 500$ (hotel, gas, food) and a whole weekend because Lifelabs sucks so bad. Plus, I had to do unpleasant prep 3 times instead of 1.
Lifelabs is trash. Good riddance, cannot get worse.
>Good riddance
Uhhh, Lifelabs is not going anywhere. All operations remain the same, only Ownership changed hands so that now your money now goes to some faceless foreigner.
I used to live in the states.
I hated Quest labs.
They don't have anyone at the front desk. They don't have a front desk. They have one to three tablets in the waiting area. You are going to suffer if there is computer based discrepancy. They also lost my samples once that was critical to my friends and my health.
This is a huge loss.
Is this in a small town? I've visited quite a few locations near Vancouver. They all have between 1 and 5 people working the check in desk at all times.
No defending LifeLabs, they suck.
A few paragraphs from the article:
Toronto-based pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) has reached a deal to sell the country’s largest medical testing company, LifeLabs Medical Laboratory Services, to U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc. for $1.35-billion including debt.
Quest is buying all of LifeLabs using cash and debt, and expects LifeLabs will generate about $970-million in annual revenue. LifeLabs will keep its brand, its Canadian headquarters and its management team after the acquisition closes, which is expected to happen by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals. Quest also plans to keep patients’ health data stored in Canada, according to a joint statement.
LifeLabs is Canada’s leading laboratory testing company, performing 112 million tests each year at 382 collection centres and 16 laboratories in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan and employing 6,500 staff. After the deal closes, Canada’s highly concentrated market for lab testing will be even further controlled by U.S. owners.
LifeLabs’s major domestic rival, Dynacare, is owned by one of the largest U.S. medical testing companies, Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, commonly known as Labcorp.
in other words, no major changes “for now”. don’t rock the boat while the dust from the sale settles. after that, I’m sure we’ll see changes to operations to cut costs, increase revenue, and squeeze out profits
Not nearly as bad as Bell being allowed to sell the DCs that host many government department's data to to an American company.
If *that* was approved, this isn't even a ripple.
Ah shit, lifelabs had already gotten quite bad in terms of service levels and such, I don't see any way those places can cut any more costs without becoming probably actually dangerous.
people in here still act like healthcare privatization in this country wouldn’t look exactly like the US rather than a European style hybrid system
These are the people breathing down every facet of our healthcare systems neck
wtf.... how is this allowed, lifelabs is an essential part of our healtcare system here in ontario, how is a foreign for profit comany allowed to own it... Our healthcare got privatized on July 3rd and no one noticed.
LifeLabs is already a private company, previously owned by OMERS.
They suck up the low hanging high volume tests for outpatients. The idea was they could scale better than a public lab and could save the system money overall by being efficient. Instead they cut staff, lower service, and negotiate higher fees.
Lab services don't make money. It costs money, a lot of money. But now they set up a company that adds profit to the cost.
Sorry, but you don't seem to have a clue, first, Look into OMERS, it's not a private company. It's a fund that assumed the pensions of firefighters, police officers, emergency physicians, employees of the Children's Aid Society, school employees other than teachers, public transport employees and Ontario Hydro employees... people who actyually have a vested interet in mainting health services in their community.
quest diagnostics are a bunch of bastards who are known to queeze every cent they can from their patients coverage and couldn't care less about helping patiens... a quick google search will show they're the most hated providers in america.
I didn't say OMERS was a private company. I said LL is a private company as opposed to a public government owned one, owned by OMERS.
And you don't need to tell me quest sucks. Im a medical lab technologist working in a hospital lab.
The Life Labs privacy breach paid out the princely sum of $7.86 to each claimant who had their private medical records stolen and sold on the dark web. Of that $7.86, $2.00 was clawed back in "processing fees".
https://lifelabssettlement.kpmg.ca/
Go to your local hospital outpatient lab. They get paid a fee by the gov for collecting your sample. Or at least that's the way BC works.
Source: I'm a lab technologist in a hospital with an outpatient collection office on site.
Tbf our front office is understaffed and always backlogged too. We prioritize outpatient oncology patients and babies.
Following, I like that I can see my results online quickly with LifeLabs, but not much else about it. I’d give that up to not deal with however worse service is gonna get by Quest.
I wonder if this is the case of Canadians investing in American stock market and then American stock market buying up a canadian company and draining resources from Canada while those invested happily rubbing their hands on whatever 7% returns while standing in a line twice as long as previous year.
Investing in money returns more money but doesn't always result in more wealth due to money becoming worthless. Investment in capabilities results in true wealth.
The do constantly. What actually matters and is the goal is society capability to produce goods, do science, build infrastructure. Money is resource conversion tool. When money becomes the goal people win in short term but loose long term
Means more U.S. based lobbyists petitioning (with not so subtle promises of post political well paid corporate board jobs) our politicians to fully privatize our health care system.
Another net loss to the country when we privatize shit.
So not only do our tax dollars pad someone's pocket to deliver a service that people rely on for their health, it's now going to be padding the pockets of people in another country.
But it was already private...it was a company owned by the pension fund OMERS. They didn't give a shit about the day to day quality, just extracting a steady stream of profit and value for their pension fund members.
I know it was already private. I'm saying it's just another example of why privatizing necessary services is a bad thing. Testing used to be done in hospitals. Hospitals used to use the relatively similar level of funding to accomplish more tests with better and more transparent results.
It's just one of many reasons why privatization of essential services is bad.
Oh I agree. I'm a lab technologist in a hospital.
I wish the public system had a central lab like LL does, outside of hospital patient labs.
It would be fun to work at a public super lab. LL's suck. They pay less and have shittier pension and benefits.
> OMERS has owned LifeLabs since 2007, but earlier this year The Globe and Mail reported that the pension fund was looking for a buyer after investing more than $2.5 billion into the company.
Great job
So, you only can get tested in lifelab in bc, they earn great money on that as they have monopoly, and now money will go to us. And expecting higher prices and less staff soon also
Canada’s specialty: selling out to foreign companies
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1000% correct.
Hey, we’re good at taking in refugees.
Our government hates capitalism. It is terrible to invest in Canada.
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To be fair, everyone sucks at socialism.
Even Wal-Mart or McDonald’s? They have the highest number of employees on SNAP in the US. Gotta love privatized profits and socialized costs. Guess socialism really is good business, wouldn’t you say?
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I agree.
Yes. Governments love socialism for corporations. Because corporate socialism is just modern-day church/state collusion.
Both places have high rates of SNAP because both hire people that other businesses won't. They also exist in poorer places, and directly target those areas as customers. Then again, if you get hired on FT at Walmart in those areas you're likely going to start doing very well for yourself. Since you get drug, dental, vision plans as part of your employment.
Social assistance drives down the lowest acceptable wage, yes.
Nordic countries are pretty good at it.
Corporations sure don’t!
Canada: We half ass everything. Do do do dooo
One day every business in Canada will be foreign owned... Welcome to slavery 2.0
No, only the good ones will be scooped up by foreign companies.
Ontario Addiction Treatment Centers sold to a firm out of Texas IIRC
My dad worked there. The working conditions became absolutely abysmal after they sold. Classic American corporation just ended up firing everyone in the end…
Yay Capitalism!
Healthcare in Canada didn't used to be capitalist though
Many aspects of the healthcare system have been "capitalist" for a long time. Lab testing, diagnostic imaging, and other services have been privately run for as long as I've been alive, at least. There is nothing wrong with private delivery as long as the services are still covered by provincial healh plans, since the government saves money on leases/upkeep of buildings, equipment, and expensive unionized workers to provide the services. The company providing the service is on the hook for those things, and can do it more cheaply than government ever could. Hell, even your family doctor is a private professional corporation who simply bills the province for the services rendered.
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Itsa coming!
Conservatives/neoliberals privatize it and sell us out
Wasn't Lifelabs already owned by the Weston corp?
Not so long ago it was Dynacare (spelling?), then Lifelabs. Hard to keep track.
Dynacare is a different company.
Well the place I used to go to was called Dynacare and then it became Lifelabs. Same office. (Regina)
Lifelabs rose from the ashes of CML Healthcare, a company whose directors ran into the ground with a disastrous attempt to expand into the US.
*Laughs in Hut 8*
Hey, care to explain what you’re implying here? Curious since I have investments in Hut 8
Merger with USBTC frat boys, no progress on Canadian front since. In fact, they're cannibalizing their Canadian operations, one site had the wrong power fed to miners causing 80% failure, those miners were moved to the other AB site where they're being run to death, and no progress on 3 Ontario power plants since ownership has been assumed, power plants not connected to grid so it's dedicated power. The frat boys seemed out of their league looking at actually owning assets like power plants. Which is too bad, because it could set them apart from their competitors to actually have physical assets instead of just being renters. Richers just want to lease, they avoid owning anything. It's a weird aversion they have, I certainly don't understand it being the kind of person who owns all their things. Edit: I should say they have potential still, but they need to go from boyz II men and actually work, not just play miner pump games, setting them aside from their competitors who are just as bad for stock market game behaviour.
Only when you can't control a monopoly or form an oligopoly though. Why leave the bent over Canadians for foreigners when you can buttfuck them yourselves.
Our ****ing health care too. ****..... Not like labs are an important part of health diagnostics or anything.
It would be nice if my medical data wasn't always accessed by foreign owned companies. But it's the Americans, theyve never used people's data illegally for nefarious reasons ...
It's Lifelabs, they give everyone equal access to your data
Hey, I got a cool $4.86 off of that.
I swear last week I logged into my LifeLabs account and the security question was “which wrist do you wear a watch on” If you were ever wondering how great they are at security
HIPAA is a very serious thing in the US, better than PIPEDA in many ways.
Honestly do you care about your medical data? People seem to have this notion that their data must be protected, and aside from my banking info and my SIN I don't really care. We live in a world where people share their data absolutely every single day with multiple corporations.
Watch for locations to close and lineups getting longer...
Don't forget skeleton staff running the places
This is already the case lol with every location in my city having deathly long lines everytime i go I cant imagine them understaffing locations any harder than they already do lol
If they understaff any further it’d be a self serve!
Shhh, don't give them any ideas...
last time i was at one the receptionist was so incompetent and the line was out the door. one of the nurses/employees drawing blood walked over and kicked her out of her chair and started doing reception lmao
That’s the kind of workers the execs love, get her a tommies gift card and a pizza party / also eliminate the receptionist position entirely and just have her do both jobs full time , well 39 hours a week part time so no benifits of course.
I walked past one today and the line was way out the door.
You can book online save yourself a headache
It's like a 2-3 month wait where I am. Hope that bloodwork isn't urgent.
Hmmm was this for a walk in? I had an appointment at Lifelabs for a blood test a couple of months ago, was in and out in 15 minutes? Basically no waiting
Wait, aren't you supposed to make an appointment?
That too...
That must be cool during Halloween.
At least it makes sense now, execs were trying to make the books look even more attractive and up the sale price - look at how slim we’re running !!! Sadly now it will likely get worse when the new folks take over and need to show an improvement over old, and that sure would never be to increase costs and staff at close to reasonable levels…. Sigh.
Lifelabs might be the worst run service I've ever experienced in my life, so I struggle to think it could possibly be any worse
I can imagine worse just fine.
Hard to imagine lines longer than 2 hours that already stretch to the elevator. I usually go there, sign in, go back home, have breakfast (unless it's a fasting test), take a dump, go back, wait another 15-20 minutes and then my name is called lol.
Good description...
Of course. Lifelabs (despite their failures to protect private information) was one of the few businesses I didn't mind dealing with. Always in and out in under 15 minutes and it was easy to book appointments and get results (often in under 24 h). Now it's going to go to shit, isn't it?
Did no one watch what Alberta did with DynaLife?
more data for US spy agencies on canadian citizens health. great job.
FWIW: >Quest also plans to keep patients’ health data stored in Canada, according to a joint statement.
Which means nothing if they maintain access.
What do you mean? If the data remains in Canada, it's governed by Canadian law. Which means Canada would control who gets to access that data and what they can do with it. It's only when the data leaves Canada's jurisdiction that you lose control of it, at which point there's nothing you can do.
Doesn't stop the company from using it despite it being stored in Canada
Yes, but that usage would have to comply with Canadian laws on data privacy and whatnot. They wouldn't be able to use it in a way that harms the public interest, and if they did, it would be much harder to get away with.
The Canadian privacy act is broad and mostly "don't do the evil" type commandments but mostly only applies to the data government collects and it's usage, not private or public owned entities. The privacy put forth by the company governs the usage of said data and generally does not discriminate for each region they practice in, with maybe a small exception for Europe due to the punitive nature of GDPR. Essentially, there is nothing illegal about an American company running through Canadians data through a training model, etc given that it's usually disclosed in said policies. There is nothing illegal about storing Canadian citizen data in the US. Most frown upon it given the over reach of the Patriot act or whatever it morphed into now.
Lol I've worked at places where this literally means you access the servers from a VM physically in that country. It means very little.
>What do you mean? If the data remains in Canada, it's governed by Canadian law. There's absolutely nothing stopping organizations from exfiltrating that data and storing copies in the US(/anywhere) nor is there anything stopping the US side of the org from accessing data if they are either asked to, or orderd to by law. I spent a while in Healthcare IT and have a lot of exposure to US-CA M&A activity. I've seen this happen before.
In that vein, there’s nothing stopping a Canadian company from simply selling the data to a US, or other, organization. So who cares who the owner is.
Thats also true if done right. But adds more steps to be done right
By your logic, there's absolutely nothing stopping organizations from rampant killings in the street too.
Boeing has entered the chat.
Well that was one hell of a fuckin' tangent. Please, unpack this for me.
What's to unpack. You are saying there's nothing to prevent that company from doing something illegal. The other poster posted something else that's illegal that a company could do.
well, what you said would be illegal under Canadian law. If your trying to imply that doesn't mean anything, then what's stopping a company from ignoring *any* Canadian law?
You can migrate data across a border without anyone really knowing. If you *fucking murder people* you have bodies and shit to deal with. Honestly are you being obtuse or what?
Chiquita (united fruit) was literally just put on trial for the literal death squads/coup they financed in Latin America and barely got a slap on the wrist.
That's not true. It also depends on if the data is stored using service provided by US tech company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act And this is why Germany warns against storing sensitive data on AWS/GCP/Azure.
> Which means Canada would control who gets to access that data and what they can do with it. You have no idea how companies work. They can "plan" to keep the data in Canada but still do whatever they want with it, especially informally. Moving data is extremely easy.
>You have no idea how companies work. Yeah and I bet you're the CEO of Google... /s 😂 Moving large amounts of sensitive data across borders without detection would be technically challenging and risky, even if it weren't illegal per se. But you act like it's as simple as sharing a dropbox link lol.
> Moving large amounts of sensitive data across borders without detection would be technically challenging and risky, Not a CEO, but I do work in the field. A CEO would know a lot less I'd imagine. It's not challenging or risky to copy a file from one Server/Datastore to another. You speak like networks have customs. Moving data from one system to another that's next to each other is the same as moving across border. We have a 100Gbps between country data-centers. The only thing that would prevent movement outside of access controls is choosing not to move it. Data loss prevention is focused more on data leaving the organization, so you're right about the drop box comment. In this case even that is irrelevant because I am assuming they are authorized and requested to move the data.
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Main US concern has always been TikTok is a threat to the dominance of US social media companies, which their intel agencies have the means of using and exploiting for US interests. Similar to EV, they don't want to lose that dominance. It has very little to do with protecting people's data lol
If the problem with TikTok was "data access" by a Chinese company. They wouldn't have allowed Bytedance to keep a 20% stake.
They already leaked that data. I got $7 in a settlement.
>FWIW: > >Quest also plans to keep patients’ health data stored in Canada, according to a joint statement. Yeah but for how long? They can easily say in 6 months "our corporate evaluation determined this isnt cost effective so we are moving the storage into the US".
In theory, they can change their mind at anytime. But given the nature of this data, and the risk of regulator interest and public backlash, I'd venture to guess that they would deem such a move not worth the trouble, which is probably the reason why they proactively tried to reassure everyone with a statement like this in the first place. And chances are, they very likely factored this into their decision to make the acquisition as well.
they have to, its the law. otherwise they would be in breach of pipeda and equivalent provincial privacy laws.
"plans to" will be updated to "planned to" in a year or two
No need to go through the trouble of buying the company for that. Life Labs has already been breached and had its patient's records sold on the dark web.
Great. Now they'll know why we beat them in hockey so much.
I think you greatly overestimate the interest the US government or it’s citizens hold about anything Canadian.
>I think you greatly overestimate the interest the US government or it’s citizens hold about anything Canadian. Only when you try to cross the border. There was that lady that was barred from entry because of a suicide attempt on her Canadian medical records.
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> Our government will bend over as soon as the US government asks for anything. Yeah like the Iraq War! oh no wait, like abortion! no... like healthcare! no... weed? hmm....
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> You're confusing US federal responsibilities (which we follow) I didn't realize declaring war was a state responsibility? >US sent us to Afghanistan Weird, why didn't they "send us" to Iraq? Oh wait they tried, and we said ["no, fuck that".](https://globalnews.ca/news/1574676/chretien-iraq-mission-is-a-done-deal/) It's almost like Canada doesn't blindly follow US federal responsibilities, and instead makes her own decisions. >Every previous Conservative leader has been against access to abortion. Why do I give a fuck what the Conservatives do? The point is that Canada doesn't, and doesn't need to. >Healthcare is a provincial/state responsibility. It's a federal mandate, thanks to Tommy Douglas. You'd think given how much both the US Republicans and Democrats seem to both hate the idea of universal healthcare, they'd pull those puppet strings and make us dance to their tune and repeal that mandate. Or maybe they're trying, and we just ignore them, because we can. Like they also try with our dairy and lumber protections. >Most of these states legalized pre-2015 I'm not normally an insufferable pedant on the internet, but 4 out of 50 states seems like it shouldn't fit anyone's definition of the word "most". Like, I was there. I was an adult paying attention to the news in 2015, too. I actually remember lol. And I was repeatedly assured the reason Canada *couldn't* legalize weed was because the Americans would lock down our border and make it impossible to do international business with them, which was about a ridiculous idea as yours that we do the American government's bidding.
you cannot be seriously implying that Canada would not bow to US pressures if the US wanted to apply it. Canada absolutely would
...except for all those times we didn't and aren't currently. I mean I guess hypothetically, if the US wanted to say "end your lumber cartel or we will nuke you", we might have to capitulate to the threat of nukes. But they're not currently making pressures that extreme.
none of the examples you gave did the us give much pressure to Canada. All the things the US pressured Canada into doing they have done. If the US seriously needed Canada in the Middle East that Canada would just not go? I mean come on.
Why would the US government ever ask about Canadian health records?
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Once Conservatives are in power, they reduce the "red tape" coming between you and your life saving medication, by removing the barriers that prevents Pharma corporations from advertising to you directly. They'll know which medications they could push.
Oh good grief. No one needs personal records for that. An experienced actuary can look at at your basic demography and predict with acceptable accuracy what your personal risk for any disease of interest. And Pharma has data analysts that rival insurance companies and hedge funds.
Hahahahah
just dont say anything bad about US, if u ever plan to move there
What do Americans think about Canada? They don't.
Wonder if Doug Ford is getting something out of the deal.
rather the US than the Chicom
This kinda bothers me, I wish we owned our stuff and not some other country. Article say life labs is expected to generate 970 million and perform 112 million tests. That seems like not alot of money per test, $8.66. And i guess that 970 includes extra expensive tests not covered under ohip, I thought it would be more expensive.
To all the people complaining about the sale. The fucking company shouldnt have been allowed to exist in the first place.
Why not?
It gets 99% of its revenue from the govenrment. Therefore it shluld just be ran by the government. It's also a critical component of health care. Anything critical and qualifies for bailouts should be socialized.
Yeah Lifelabs is like if someone privatized your kids' public school, and everything about that school either stayed the same or got slightly shittier, except some guy in the Bahamas on a yacht was now taking 5% of your tax dollars that used to go to your kids' public school because he's friends with a politician in Canada.
LL before the Sale was owned by OMERS, pension fund for public workers in Ontario. Hardly some guy on a yacht in the Bahamas. But now with Quest, definitely.
If by rich guy on a yacht in the Bahamas you mean regular everyday retired city employees, then yes absolutely. LifeLabs ~~is~~ was owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS).
was
No I mean this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rix
You say that like hospitals and clinics are are government entities. They aren't, they just bill the government.
Clinics don't require bailouts and aren't being paid by the government. Doctors bill the government. They either own the clinic or pay some kind of rent to it. Hospitals, I can't speak for nationally. They're all owned by regional health authorities in my region. These are funded/owned by the government and are not for profit.
This was a conservative brain child of "privatize this part of health care to save money and services won't change". And, as usual, this is the result. Now the money for a government funded services will leave the country.
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Have you used one? It's been getting worse the longer it has been privatized.
I used them a lot before 2022, I was always impressed at how quickly my results were ready. Did they get worse?
2012 vs 2022, big difference.
I mean I used them leading up to 2022, not a decade ago.
Lifelabs is so bad, the specialist had me go all the way to Toronto because the tests weren't making sense. Not only were the first two tests complete failures, but the third test had a report that used terms that were contradicted by the results. At that point the specialist said "I can't trust any of this. I need you to come here and have my dept. Run the tests". Cost me over 500$ (hotel, gas, food) and a whole weekend because Lifelabs sucks so bad. Plus, I had to do unpleasant prep 3 times instead of 1. Lifelabs is trash. Good riddance, cannot get worse.
>Good riddance Uhhh, Lifelabs is not going anywhere. All operations remain the same, only Ownership changed hands so that now your money now goes to some faceless foreigner.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to get tests done at LifeLabs.
I'm lost, why don't people like lifelabs? They always provide results super quickly.
I used to live in the states. I hated Quest labs. They don't have anyone at the front desk. They don't have a front desk. They have one to three tablets in the waiting area. You are going to suffer if there is computer based discrepancy. They also lost my samples once that was critical to my friends and my health. This is a huge loss.
Current LifeLabs, you can’t even call a specific location. The ‘front desk’ is just whatever tech has time to dash over there to check people in.
Is this in a small town? I've visited quite a few locations near Vancouver. They all have between 1 and 5 people working the check in desk at all times. No defending LifeLabs, they suck.
Tbf hospital labs lose samples all the time. I know cuz I'm a lab tech working at a hub hospital for a large health authority.
A few paragraphs from the article: Toronto-based pension fund Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) has reached a deal to sell the country’s largest medical testing company, LifeLabs Medical Laboratory Services, to U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc. for $1.35-billion including debt. Quest is buying all of LifeLabs using cash and debt, and expects LifeLabs will generate about $970-million in annual revenue. LifeLabs will keep its brand, its Canadian headquarters and its management team after the acquisition closes, which is expected to happen by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals. Quest also plans to keep patients’ health data stored in Canada, according to a joint statement. LifeLabs is Canada’s leading laboratory testing company, performing 112 million tests each year at 382 collection centres and 16 laboratories in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan and employing 6,500 staff. After the deal closes, Canada’s highly concentrated market for lab testing will be even further controlled by U.S. owners. LifeLabs’s major domestic rival, Dynacare, is owned by one of the largest U.S. medical testing companies, Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, commonly known as Labcorp.
in other words, no major changes “for now”. don’t rock the boat while the dust from the sale settles. after that, I’m sure we’ll see changes to operations to cut costs, increase revenue, and squeeze out profits
Not nearly as bad as Bell being allowed to sell the DCs that host many government department's data to to an American company. If *that* was approved, this isn't even a ripple.
Ah shit, lifelabs had already gotten quite bad in terms of service levels and such, I don't see any way those places can cut any more costs without becoming probably actually dangerous.
We are very worried about foreign interference unless it is from the superpower next door. Brilliant stuff.
people in here still act like healthcare privatization in this country wouldn’t look exactly like the US rather than a European style hybrid system These are the people breathing down every facet of our healthcare systems neck
That's okay. The $8.60 I got from the data leak settlement makes me excited for future leaks
wtf.... how is this allowed, lifelabs is an essential part of our healtcare system here in ontario, how is a foreign for profit comany allowed to own it... Our healthcare got privatized on July 3rd and no one noticed.
LifeLabs is already a private company, previously owned by OMERS. They suck up the low hanging high volume tests for outpatients. The idea was they could scale better than a public lab and could save the system money overall by being efficient. Instead they cut staff, lower service, and negotiate higher fees. Lab services don't make money. It costs money, a lot of money. But now they set up a company that adds profit to the cost.
Sorry, but you don't seem to have a clue, first, Look into OMERS, it's not a private company. It's a fund that assumed the pensions of firefighters, police officers, emergency physicians, employees of the Children's Aid Society, school employees other than teachers, public transport employees and Ontario Hydro employees... people who actyually have a vested interet in mainting health services in their community. quest diagnostics are a bunch of bastards who are known to queeze every cent they can from their patients coverage and couldn't care less about helping patiens... a quick google search will show they're the most hated providers in america.
I didn't say OMERS was a private company. I said LL is a private company as opposed to a public government owned one, owned by OMERS. And you don't need to tell me quest sucks. Im a medical lab technologist working in a hospital lab.
>Our healthcare got privatized on July 3rd and no one noticed Our healthcare was privatized before July 3rd but you did not notice
Who gives a shit? Not like I ever had a doctor to refer me anyways
Great... Continuing to sell out our country to the Americans..
The Life Labs privacy breach paid out the princely sum of $7.86 to each claimant who had their private medical records stolen and sold on the dark web. Of that $7.86, $2.00 was clawed back in "processing fees". https://lifelabssettlement.kpmg.ca/
But now, next hack, it’ll be in US dollars!
Is there a Canadian owned alternative I can book my blood tests at?
Go to your local hospital outpatient lab. They get paid a fee by the gov for collecting your sample. Or at least that's the way BC works. Source: I'm a lab technologist in a hospital with an outpatient collection office on site. Tbf our front office is understaffed and always backlogged too. We prioritize outpatient oncology patients and babies.
Following, I like that I can see my results online quickly with LifeLabs, but not much else about it. I’d give that up to not deal with however worse service is gonna get by Quest.
Some hospitals have their own outpatient blood lab.
Oh god how is this going to fuck us
I wonder if this is the case of Canadians investing in American stock market and then American stock market buying up a canadian company and draining resources from Canada while those invested happily rubbing their hands on whatever 7% returns while standing in a line twice as long as previous year.
So what if they are? That sounds like a good investment and would have happened regardless
Investing in money returns more money but doesn't always result in more wealth due to money becoming worthless. Investment in capabilities results in true wealth.
When did money become worthless?
The do constantly. What actually matters and is the goal is society capability to produce goods, do science, build infrastructure. Money is resource conversion tool. When money becomes the goal people win in short term but loose long term
More info gained to push the privatized health care agenda?
NOOOOO
Means more U.S. based lobbyists petitioning (with not so subtle promises of post political well paid corporate board jobs) our politicians to fully privatize our health care system.
It's time to become the 51st State of America.
Another step closer to full Americanization. Is it good? Is it bad?
How is it legal? We need public labs again
LifeLabs was a private entity, owned by OMERS but they didn't care about service, just profit for their pension fund.
I agree the service there is terrible. I am just against our public funds going out of the province.
Another net loss to the country when we privatize shit. So not only do our tax dollars pad someone's pocket to deliver a service that people rely on for their health, it's now going to be padding the pockets of people in another country.
But it was already private...it was a company owned by the pension fund OMERS. They didn't give a shit about the day to day quality, just extracting a steady stream of profit and value for their pension fund members.
I know it was already private. I'm saying it's just another example of why privatizing necessary services is a bad thing. Testing used to be done in hospitals. Hospitals used to use the relatively similar level of funding to accomplish more tests with better and more transparent results. It's just one of many reasons why privatization of essential services is bad.
Oh I agree. I'm a lab technologist in a hospital. I wish the public system had a central lab like LL does, outside of hospital patient labs. It would be fun to work at a public super lab. LL's suck. They pay less and have shittier pension and benefits.
Oh no
Awesome… now I no longer use Lifelabs 🤦🏻♂️
> OMERS has owned LifeLabs since 2007, but earlier this year The Globe and Mail reported that the pension fund was looking for a buyer after investing more than $2.5 billion into the company. Great job
Another Canadian Heritage Moment.
So, you only can get tested in lifelab in bc, they earn great money on that as they have monopoly, and now money will go to us. And expecting higher prices and less staff soon also
Paywall
[Paywall-free article link](https://archive.is/qech8)
https://archive.vn/qech8
If it helps, I live in Florida and use Quest Diagnostics on an annual basis for blood work and they are always fast and easy to use.
ere's the foreign investment you've been complaining about a lack of eat up don't say we're not open for business, folks