You Can’t Donate Sperm

A Canadian citizen has no pathway to voluntarily anonymously donate sperm.

Donor sperm is necessary for IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). If a couple or an individual has a fertility challenge donor sperm may be required to conceive a child.

The main cause for this is a lack of interested donors, exacerbated by a regulation change, resulted in all donor recruitment processes basically collapsing.

In August 2025, the last remaining company (Origin) that had a process setup for donation ceased their ‘donor recruitment and resale operations’.

Related: In 2004 the Assisted Human Reproduction Act made it illegal to purchase reproductive cells (sperm/ovum). The decrease in demand over time progressively shut down the entire Canadian donor recruitment industry.

Before 2004, companies would pay the donor (increased cost) so one would think that the cost reduction would be beneficial. Unfortunately, there have been so few donors, it no longer became economically viable to collect from Canadians and the processes have shut down entirely.

Keep in mind, the regulation change just made this shortage happen quicker, the underlying issue is a lack of awareness and/or insufficient effort to find donors.

There is currently a significant sperm shortage. As it stands, if an individual wants to voluntarily donate their sperm for free, there is no organization in Canada that can do it.

This has resulted in many challenges, here are three in particular:

1. Over 80%, but soon 100% of all sperm used in Canadian reproductive treatments will be imported, usually from the United States.

2. Supply and demand. There are substantially more people who are asking for cells then there are cells in supply, this can result in any number of issues with a scarce resource in a medical context.

3. Genetic diversity. Due to insufficient supply, it makes practical sense to use every donor sample. This has resulted in individual donors having over 200 children. The numbers are so significant that some people have apparently unknowingly married their half-sibling. When siblings attempt to reproduce, their children carry the risk of significant health problem (this is well understood). 

Further, it is difficult to raise the standards for quality control when the resource itself is scarce.

There is also the consideration that certain communities (same-sex couples) cannot have children without these procedures.

This is not an issue that only effects same-sex couples. Sometimes people wait until they are financially stable to have children, this can take quite some time for many. Many will argue that this is the responsible thing to do, ‘don’t have children until one can pay for them’.

With increasing pressures on the younger generation, affordability, housing, etc. it is commonly understood that the more recent generations will be financially worse-off than their parents. It would also stand do reason that, if this generation follows said ‘responsibility advice’ that they will likely decide to have children later in life, if at all.

A hypothesis, this should likely result in an increased demand for IVF, donor sperm, and appear to be shutting down this infrastructure.

Possible solution: Have public health or Canadian Blood Services or some other agency facilitate the collection and then sell it to the fertility clinics. Do not pay the donor, a change in the law is not required.

It is my understanding that logistically one really only needs refrigeration, licenced health professionals which are qualified to deal with these samples, and the logistics around lab access and testing. These things already exist.

It appears that this is the sort of thing that Canada should be able to facilitate using pre-existing health infrastructure to help reduce the risk that people end up marrying their half-sibling.

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.