GROUPS DEBATE DRUG TESTING LAW

Randomly testing workers likely against charter

EDMONTON - A law authorizing private companies to randomly test their
workers for alcohol or drug abuse would likely face a constitutional
challenge, says a local law professor.

"The difficulty for the minister is that if he passes legislation, he brings
the Charter (of Rights and Freedoms) in," says Peter Carver of the
University of Alberta Law School. Charter challenges can't be launched
against companies, but they can be brought against laws, he said.

Clint Dunford, Alberta's minister of human resources and employment, said
Wednesday the government needs to create a legislative framework for company
testing over the next five years to combat the growing problem of impairment
on the job.

Dunford said he thought random drug and alcohol testing would be part of
that procedure. No other province has such legislation, but most American
states do, according to his department.

Some of Alberta's largest companies already have mandatory pre-employment
testing plus employee testing based on reasonable grounds.

Those practices apparently do not violate human rights legislation, says
Carver. A decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal found random testing
violated human rights law, however.

A new Alberta law that authorized random testing would probably face a
charter challenge under the equality section, he suggested.

"It could be claimed that it discriminated against people with a
disability," Carter said.

"If alcoholism and drug addiction are illnesses, then employees with those
conditions are disabled, according to the argument.

There's not much point in the government bringing in new legislation unless
it wants to expand or reduce a companies' ability to test employees, he
noted.

Dunford expressed significant concern about drinking and drug taking on the
job, but a study by AADAC in 2002 found little change in worker drinking
habits and only a slight increase in drug use in a decade, mostly from
marijuana use. Comparisons were used with a similar AADAC study conducted in
1992.

A survey of nearly 3,000 employees showed about 11 per cent of workers
acknowledged drinking on the job during the past year.

The AADAC study found above-average, at-risk drinking in the construction
and wholesale-retail trade business.

A couple of labour organizations joined Dan MacLennan, the president of the
Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, in challenging the need for random
drug testing.

Kevin Flaherty, of the Alberta Workers' Health Centre, cited the AADAC
report, noting only one per cent of employees reported using drugs at work.

"Attempts to make drugs or alcohol the boogeyman in Alberta workplaces have
no basis in reality," he said.

"Random testing does intimidate, humiliate and stigmatize those whose
recreational use of alcohol and drugs has no impact on their job," he added.