Pretty sure I’ve seen a few sci-fi movies whose plots aren’t so different from the real-life Grifols blood plasma shocker that has been making the news recently. The story in a nutshell: A Spanish pharmaceutical multinational sets up shop in Canada to buy people’s blood plasma to sell into the global market. Even though death from plasma donation is reportedly very rare, two people then die. Health Canada reacts, Grifols shuts down its many Canadian collection centres, and the unsettling details about giant corporations paying people to sell their body fluids are suddenly the talk of the town. Grifols arrived in Canada in 2022, signing a 15-year agreement with Canadian Blood Services for commercial plasma extraction in Ontario even though CBS itself has a strict policy against paying people for their blood or plasma. (Things that make you go hmm….) A year later, Grifols bought up a chain of private plasma-collection facilities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick an...
A couple of the fabulous moms out there holding onto their kids - Lisa and Correne I'm a big fan of the Facebook group started by Mar (who lives on 800-block Pandora), called Homeless Victoria Bylaw Experiences . Today's post is from Jimmy , who I've known since back in the Holiday Court days, as bylaw officers seize a brand-new tent on Pandora and toss it in their dumpster. If the inhumanity and sheer pointless doesn't get to people, surely the waste issues ought to. Why hasn't there been a single report out of City of Victoria detailing the results of these 32 months of extra-rough enforcement since the Property in Custody bylaw took effect? How much of the "up to 10 tonnes" of people's personal property that the city takes away every week goes to the dump? How much gets reclaimed? What's the chain of custody process? Is there any appeal process? (Spoiler alert: No.) Are they really trashing that brand-new tent - and if they're not, then what...