TTC REPORT RECOMMENDS EMPLOYEE DRUG TESTING

Blames Lack Of Safety Procedures, Not Drug Use, For Fatal Accident
Last Year; Tests Conclude Driver Was Under Influence When He Died

While saying drug and alcohol use on the job among TTC workers is
"not rampant," TTC officials said yesterday they didn't know how many
transit workers are disciplined each year for being drunk or stoned,
even as they begin considering a controversial testing regime for employees.

That idea is among the safety recommendations made in a report
released yesterday on the April, 2007, subway crash that killed
work-car driver Antonio (Tony) Almeida, whom the report concludes
smoked marijuana on his final shift, according to toxicology tests.

While the report blames a lack of safety procedures, and not the drug
use, for the accident, it also reveals that Mr. Almeida - a
38-year-old father of two - was fired a year earlier for smoking
marijuana, but reinstated after his union took up his case.

The TTC's chief general manager, Gary Webster, said TTC staff had
caught Mr. Almeida using marijuana on a break, sitting in his car in
a parking lot. He had been returned to work under conditions that he
show up "fit for duty." However, yesterday's report says his
supervisors were unaware of these conditions.

The report's findings have added to calls for drug and alcohol
testing - vehemently opposed by the TTC's largest union - that came
after a TTC bus driver was charged with impaired driving last week.

But Mr. Webster and Adam Giambrone, the city councillor who chairs
the TTC, said yesterday the TTC needs to compile its records before
it can say how many of its workers have been disciplined for drug or alcohol.

"I really don't want to go there. Not that many, clearly," Mr. Webster said.

Around 4:30 a.m. on April 23, 2007, an 11-person crew removing
asbestos from the subway tunnel walls north of Eglinton Station
finished and began to head south on a two-car work train.

The front car, a flatbed, was outfitted with eight telescoping metal
platforms that allowed workers to reach the tunnel walls. Pushing it
from behind was a conventional subway car, driven by Mr. Almeida.

But four of those platforms, the investigation concluded, were not
properly stowed. The one directly in front of Mr. Almeida's cab was
left fully extended.

It caught the side of the tunnel wall, causing it to fold backward
into the subway-car cab where Mr. Almeida was seated, killing him
instantly. Two workers were also seriously injured, and others there
that night have suffered from post-traumatic stress, Mr. Webster said.

All of the workers have insisted they stowed their platforms properly
and that the equipment must have come loose. Police and TTC
management rejected this version of events after testing the
equipment and recreating the accident, Mr. Webster said.

Telling the surviving crew members this in a tense meeting this week
was difficult, he said, as was a recent meeting with Mr. Almeida's widow.

"What we don't want our employees to think, what we don't want Mrs.
Almeida to think, is that we're blaming them," Mr. Webster said.
"This is not a blame game."

The TTC has taken responsibility for the accident, pleading guilty to
a Ministry of Labour charge and paying a $250,000 fine.

Mr. Webster also acknowledged yesterday that the ministry's
investigation into the accident revealed that a similar work-car
crash had occurred on the Bloor-Danforth line in 2002, but the TTC
did not address the problem.

Mr. Webster, who has spurred a re-examination of safety at the TTC,
said that in addition to tightening its training and other
procedures, the TTC is modifying the work-car so that it will not
move unless all of its platforms are stowed.

Bob Kinnear, president of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union,
called the report a "damning reflection" of the TTC's safety
practices, but accused management of trying to shift blame onto the
worker who died by highlighting his drug use.

"The TTC is trying to put the onus on a dead man. ... Did they test
his supervisor?" Mr. Kinnear said yesterday. "I think it is
absolutely disgraceful."