Mayor Paul Lefebvre tabled a successful motion during the Feb. 10 city council meeting pushing the province to take ‘immediate action’ to maintain medical laboratory processing capacity in Greater Sudbury
A unanimous city council has agreed to urge the province to take “immediate action” to maintain medical laboratory processing capacity in Greater Sudbury.
Tabled during the Feb. 10 city council meeting at the Lionel E. Lalonde Centre in Azilda, Mayor Paul Lefebvre’s motion to this effect follows recent news that LifeLabs plans on closing its Sudbury laboratory.
The closure is anticipated to take place sometime this spring and put 40 local technologists out of work. The Sudbury laboratory handles medical samples taken from throughout the region, which upon its closure will be handled at laboratories in Toronto and Mississauga.
During the Feb. 10 meeting, Lefebvre told his colleagues that he met with LifeLabs representatives the previous day, who “didn’t feel that there were going to be any consequences to the residents of Sudbury or Northern Ontario.”
“Certainly, I disagree, and I was very clear that we are very concerned about this and we’re hearing from a lot of physicians and long-term care homes … that they need the results as fast as they can,” he said.
Lefebvre said the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities and Northern Ontario Mayors are urging all municipal councils in the region to draft motions similar to Greater Sudbury’s, to urge provincial action on LifeLabs’ impending closure.
The Sudbury laboratory serves a wide swath of Northeast Ontario, including Timmins and North Bay.
Per Lefebvre’s motion, the province will “be urged to ensure reliable, timely and medically appropriate laboratory turnaround times for Northern Ontario patients, recognizing the unique geographic and climatic challenges in the region,” according to Mayor Paul Lefebvre’s successful motion.
Local NDP MPPs Jamie West and France Gélinas have been pushing back against LifeLabs’ decision to close the laboratory. They raised the issue in Queen’s Park in December, wrote an open letter last month and brought it up during a recent pre-provincial budget consultation meeting in Sudbury.
At this meeting, Medical Laboratory Professionals Association of Ontario representative Jessie Clelland told the committee of provincial representatives that the laboratory’s closure would “be detrimental” to the community and inevitably affect local health care.
“This will affect so much more than just the lab sector, it will affect all of health care,” Clelland said. “The right thing to do is keep these centres open for testing.”
Highway and/or flight delays will result in tests needing to be retaken, she said, adding, “You limit the number of labs, you’re limiting health care.”
Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt Conservative MP Jim Bélanger expressed support for keeping the laboratory open, and Sudbury Liberal MP Viviane Lapointe raised concerns regarding its impending closure with Health Minister Marjorie Michel.
LifeLabs is privately owned by U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics, which made the decision to close the Sudbury laboratory.
The City of Greater Sudbury advocacy spurred by Lefebvre’s motion echoes a prior plea he expressed in a media release last month in which he urged the province to do what they can to keep the laboratory open.
“At a time when the province is counting on Northern Ontario to support economic growth and critical industries, it makes no sense to weaken access to essential and reliable health services that workers and families depend on,” Lefebvre said at the time.
The mayor’s full motion is as follows:
WHEREAS LifeLabs has announced its intention to close its Greater Sudbury laboratory, and the transfer of medical specimen processing from Northern Ontario to laboratories in southern Ontario; and
WHEREAS the Greater Sudbury laboratory provides essential diagnostic services to communities across Northern Ontario, including urban, rural and remote municipalities, and plays a critical role in ensuring timely and reliable medical testing for Northern residents; and
WHEREAS patients with chronic illness, newborns, long-term care residents and individuals on time-sensitive medications depend on predictable laboratory turnaround times to support clinical decision-making; and
WHEREAS transporting medical specimens long distances to southern Ontario increases the risk of delays, specimen degradation and retesting, particularly during frequent winter highway closures, potentially jeopardizing patient outcomes; and
WHEREAS Northern Ontario is already experiencing shortages of health-care professionals, and the closure of this laboratory further undermines regional workforce stability, training capacity and recruitment and retention efforts;
WHEREAS the City of Greater Sudbury continues to experience sustained population growth, an expanding housing supply and a strong job market, all factors that collectively increase demand for accessible, reliable and locally delivered health-care services, including timely medical laboratory testing;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City of Greater Sudbury calls on the Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Health to take immediate action to ensure that essential medical laboratory services remain accessible within Northern Ontario, including maintaining local laboratory processing capacity in Greater Sudbury; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the province be urged to ensure reliable, timely and medically appropriate laboratory turnaround times for Northern Ontario patients, recognizing the unique geographic and climatic challenges of the region; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the province be requested to protect and support the Northern Ontario health-care workforce, including medical laboratory technologists, by preventing further service centralization that disproportionately impacts Northern communities; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this resolution be forwarded to the Honourable Sylvia Jones, Minister of Health, the Honourable Vijay Thanigasalam, Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, the Honourable Vic Fedeli, Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Growth, the Honourable George Pirie, Member of Provincial Parliament Jamie West and Member of Provincial Parliament France Gélinas, the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Rural Ontario Municipal Association.
—–
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.