Records Show Officials Managed Messaging After Two Plasma Donors Died at Winnipeg Grifols Sites

Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions. This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full below.

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Two people died after donating plasma at for-profit Grifols collection centres in Winnipeg, and internal emails between Health Canada, Nova Scotia's Department of Health and Wellness, and Canadian Blood Services show officials spent weeks carefully managing what the public would be told. The records reveal a coordinated communications effort built around redirecting every inquiry to Health Canada, keeping a draft incident summary "internal," and preparing a reactive holding statement to be used only if the media started asking questions.

The documents were released by Nova Scotia's Department of Health and Wellness under provincial Freedom of Information law in response to request 2026-00631-HEA, which sought all communications between the department, Health Canada, and Canadian Blood Services regarding two plasma donors who died at Grifols sites. The release covers correspondence between late October 2025 and mid-March 2026, and includes a Health Canada slide deck, a confidential Canadian Blood Services briefing on the history of plasmapheresis incidents, and a reactive statement marked "Restricted."

What the Documents Show

According to the records, the first death occurred in October 2025, when a donor experienced an adverse reaction during a plasma donation at a Grifols centre in Winnipeg and later died in hospital. The second was reported on February 2, 2026, when Grifols Canada Plasma II Inc. learned that a donor who had last donated on January 29, 2026, at the Winnipeg Plasmapheresis Center had died. A Health Canada official relayed the second report to colleagues in Nova Scotia and at Canadian Blood Services on February 9, 2026, noting only that "the report is under review" and that there had already been "internal meetings on a comms approach."

From that point, the correspondence is almost entirely about coordination and messaging rather than the medical facts of the two deaths. Officials at Health Canada, the provinces and territories, and Canadian Blood Services worked through who held authority, who would speak publicly, and how to phrase a response if one became necessary. A recurring theme runs through nearly every email: the provinces and territories, and Canadian Blood Services, repeatedly stated that they do not have regulatory authority over plasma collection, and that all questions should be directed to Health Canada as the federal regulator.

The specific cause of each death is not disclosed in the released records. Those details, along with the donors' identities, are withheld under section 20 of Nova Scotia's FOIPOP Act, which protects against unreasonable invasion of personal privacy. Several other passages — including portions of a confidential Canadian Blood Services incident summary and proposed edits to it — are redacted under section 14, which covers advice and recommendations developed for a public body. What remains is a clear picture of process: how Canada's blood-system institutions talk to one another when something goes wrong.

Who Speaks, and Who Stays Quiet

The reactive statement Canadian Blood Services prepared, dated February 24, 2026, and marked as a restricted document, is brief and carefully worded. It expresses that the organisation is "deeply saddened to learn of this serious health event in a Grifols' plasma donor centre," notes that it is in contact with Grifols, confirms that Health Canada "was appropriately notified" and that an investigation is underway, and stresses that "all plasma donation centres in Canada are licensed and regulated by Health Canada." It closes by saying serious health events are "exceedingly rare." The same regulatory-redirect language appears in a separate statement for inquiries: blood and plasma collection centres in Canada are licensed and regulated by Health Canada, and any questions should go there.

Crucially, the records show this was a reactive statement — meaning it was to be held in reserve and used only if reporters asked, not proactively released. In a March email, a Canadian Blood Services representative confirmed the reactive statement "was not shared with PTs" because the organisation "didn't want to share what CBS deemed confidential." The incident summary itself was to remain internal to the provinces and territories. Nova Scotia, acting as the lead province for the Provincial Territorial Blood Liaison Committee, told Health Canada it had recommended that committee representatives use agreed-upon language and refer any further questions back to Health Canada, "as details can evolve/change and they are the authority as well as investigators."

The provinces and territories, meanwhile, wanted more. Emails from the blood liaison committee show representatives pressing for "an acknowledgement of the incidents that have occurred the Manitoba Grifols sites" and for a preliminary discussion to align on next steps. Officials repeatedly described the provinces and territories as "curious" and "concerned," but without jurisdiction — supportive of plasma self-sufficiency as a goal, while acknowledging they had no formal role in regulating the centres where the deaths occurred.

A Jurisdictional Grey Zone

One of the clearer threads in the release is how much of the work was simply figuring out who was responsible for what. Within Health Canada, two separate regulatory branches were involved: the Health Products and Food Branch (HPFB), responsible for blood safety, and the Regulatory Operations and Enforcement Branch (ROEB), responsible for establishment licensing and inspections. The two coordinated on which would lead the file and how to engage the provinces, with one official noting that ROEB was "following our own inspection processes with the regulated entity" while HPFB would "lead a national discussion with PTs."

The provinces and territories operate the blood liaison committee but, as the documents repeatedly state, hold no regulatory authority over collection sites. Canadian Blood Services and Grifols are the operators. Ontario sits in a distinct position: the records note Grifols operates in Ontario under the province's Voluntary Blood Donations Act as an agent of Canadian Blood Services, a wrinkle that officials flagged as adding "complexities that may not be experienced by the other PTs." Quebec, which works with a different blood operator (Héma-Québec), does not sit on the committee at all.

This diffusion of responsibility is the backdrop to the entire correspondence. A donor died at a private, for-profit collection centre; the federal regulator licenses and inspects that centre; the provinces fund and coordinate the broader blood system but cannot regulate the site; and the national blood operator contracts with the company that runs it. The result, visible across dozens of emails, was a slow, cautious process of meetings, draft statements, and deferrals — much of it shaped by the question of who had the standing to say anything at all. Health Canada's own oversight role, the same kind of regulatory authority that governs its review and approval of health products such as new drugs, extends to inspecting any establishment operating under the federal Blood Regulations.

What Health Canada Told the Provinces

The release includes the slide deck Health Canada presented to the Canadian Blood Liaison Committee on March 12, 2026, titled "Health Canada Engagement on Plasma Oversight." It is a primer on the federal regulatory framework: blood and plasma collection is governed by the Food and Drugs Act and the Blood Regulations, establishments require authorizations and licences, and Health Canada conducts inspections that can be scheduled or unannounced and that end in a rating of compliant or non-compliant.

On the two deaths specifically, the deck is sparse. One slide states that on February 3, 2026, Grifols Canada Plasma II Inc. in Winnipeg reported a fatal adverse reaction in a donor — with the remainder of the sentence redacted — and that in October 2025, a donor experienced an adverse reaction during donation at the Winnipeg Grifols centre and later died in hospital. The deck's key conclusion, repeated almost verbatim in the public-facing statements, is that "assessment of the adverse reaction reports is ongoing" and that "to date, no direct link has been established between plasma donation process and the death."

The presentation frames the deaths within a broader message that adverse events from donation are rare, citing a 2021 study in the journal Transfusion that reviewed more than 22 million whole-blood and plasma donations across eight blood operators over 2015–2017 and found no fatalities with a definite, probable, or possible link to donation. Health Canada's stated objectives for the session were to describe its regulatory role, outline federal-provincial-territorial responsibilities, provide an overview of recent serious donor adverse-reaction reports, and identify considerations around information sharing — the last of which the deck flagged as an area where the system could "strengthen timeliness and transparency."

What the Blood Services History Document Says

The most substantive attachment in the release is a confidential Canadian Blood Services briefing titled "History of Global Plasmapheresis Incidents," updated March 2026 and marked confidential. It is an attempt to put the Winnipeg deaths in international context, and it makes one striking on-record claim: beyond the recent incidents at the Grifols sites in Manitoba, Canadian Blood Services states it is "not aware of any prior donation associated fatalities in Canada," whether at Canadian Blood Services, Héma-Québec, Grifols, or Canadian Plasma Resources. The sentence that follows is redacted.

The document notes that the most common adverse events that can result in a fatality are cardiovascular events and anaphylactic reactions, and that acute cardiac symptoms occurring within 24 hours of donation may not be related to the donation itself. It cites U.S. FDA data showing that since 2007, across more than 450 million donations, there have been no fatalities with a definite link to source plasma donation and only five with a probable link — four of them in the last five years. A table in the document tallies 124 fatalities "linked to source plasma" across roughly 242 million U.S. donations from 2018 to 2022, with zero classified as definite, four as probable, and the rest spread across possible, doubtful, ruled out, and not assessable categories.

The briefing also recounts a 2009 case in Lyon, France, in which a plasma donor died after a staff member mixed up the anticoagulant and saline solutions during set-up, giving the donor a large infusion of anticoagulant. Canadian Blood Services uses the example to describe the safeguards now built into its own process — differently shaped bags, colour-coded holders, and a required second-staff verification — that it says were implemented as lessons from that incident. The reaction at the heart of the present case is one Winnipeg has not seen documented before in Canada, which echoes the broader pattern of scrutiny over safety practices in Winnipeg health facilities that has surfaced elsewhere in the city's health system.

What's Missing from the Records

The released package answers the question of how officials coordinated, but not the question most readers would ask first: what actually killed the two donors. The cause of death in both cases is withheld under the personal-privacy exemption, as are the donors' ages, sexes, and any identifying details. The records confirm only that one death involved an adverse reaction during donation followed by death in hospital, and that the other involved a donor who had last donated days before dying.

The section 14 redactions are also significant. They cover parts of the confidential Canadian Blood Services incident summary and the proposed factual corrections the organisation wanted made to the provinces' messaging — meaning the public cannot see exactly what facts were in dispute between Canadian Blood Services and the provinces, or what was changed. The original FOI request specifically asked for briefing notes prepared on the subject; the release includes a presentation and a history document, but no standalone briefing note is identified as such in the package.

Also absent is any indication of an outcome. The documents end in mid-March 2026 with the assessment still described as "ongoing" and "no direct link" established. Whether Health Canada's inspection of the Winnipeg facilities found the sites compliant, whether any corrective actions were ordered, and whether the cause of either death was ever determined are not contained in this release.

Why It Matters

For-profit, paid plasma collection has expanded in Canada in recent years, with companies like Grifols operating collection centres under Health Canada licences as part of a national push toward plasma self-sufficiency. The records show that when two donors died at such a centre, the system's instinct was caution and containment: a reactive statement held in reserve, repeated assurances that incidents are rare, and a consistent message that all questions belong with the federal regulator. The provinces wanted acknowledgement and information; the operator wanted to keep its incident summary confidential; and the regulator moved deliberately while its assessment continued.

The documents also surface, in the institutions' own words, a recognised weakness: information sharing. Health Canada's slide deck explicitly listed "opportunities to strengthen timeliness and transparency" and "potential mechanisms for improvement" as discussion points — an acknowledgement that the way news of serious donor adverse reactions travels through Canada's blood system is something officials themselves saw room to improve. For donors weighing whether to give plasma at a Canadian collection centre, the released records offer reassurance that fatalities are rare and that no link to the donation process had been established — but they leave the central medical questions unanswered.

All documents and figures referenced are from Nova Scotia's Department of Health and Wellness, request 2026-00631-HEA, obtained through a provincial Freedom of Information request. The records consist of correspondence between Health Canada, Nova Scotia Health and Wellness, and Canadian Blood Services between October 2025 and March 2026, a Health Canada presentation on plasma oversight, and a confidential Canadian Blood Services briefing on the history of plasmapheresis incidents.