EDMONTON — Effective Wednesday, Alberta Precision Laboratories — the province's diagnostic testing network, with approximately 4,000 employees — is no longer operated by Alberta Health Services. As of midnight, ownership has been formally transferred to Primary Care Alberta, the new agency created last year as part of the dismantling of AHS into a four-agency model.

The transfer, the province confirmed, was scheduled for April 1 for reasons that were unrelated to the date, although the province declined to specify what the reasons were. Asked whether the timing had been considered, a spokesperson said that "the calendar was reviewed" before the decision was finalized, and that the review concluded with the date being kept.

"This is a normal operational transfer," said a Primary Care Alberta spokesperson, addressing reporters at a podium beside a sign that read, in part, Better Care, Together. The sign, the spokesperson confirmed, had also been the sign at the previous press conference announcing the creation of Primary Care Alberta, and the press conference announcing the creation of the agency that preceded it.

Laboratory staff received notice of the change via internal email three weeks ago, the email having arrived at 4:47 p.m. on a Friday. Several employees reported receiving the email twice, and then again from a third sender. One technician told The Alberta Advantage that he had been an employee of Alberta Health Services for nine years, then briefly an employee of "a transitional entity," then an employee of Alberta Precision Laboratories operating under AHS, and is now, as of this morning, an employee of a different operator, doing the same job, in the same building, for the same pay.

Asked whether Primary Care Alberta has the operational capacity to absorb a 4,000-person diagnostic network, the spokesperson said the question was "premature." Pressed on whether the answer was no, the spokesperson said the answer was "in development."

The Alberta Health Sciences Association, which represents lab workers, issued a statement noting that the transfer "raised serious questions about continuity of testing services, employee classification, and basic project management." A government source, speaking anonymously, characterized the statement as "predictable" and added that the same union had said similar things during the previous three transfers, none of which had produced "a service collapse" — language the source clarified meant "not yet."

The decision to transfer ownership of a 4,000-employee laboratory network on April 1 was, the spokesperson confirmed, made by humans, in a building, on purpose.