DRUGS FLOOD OILSANDS CITY, BUT RESIDENTS DIFFER ON DANGERS

Ted Goodnough and Thompson Bros. Construction Ltd. agree on one thing
- - there are a lot of drugs on the streets of Fort McMurray.

"It's the drug capital of the world," said Goodnough.

But while the 54-year-old truck driver says that drug culture also
extends well into the workplace - creating "an environment of fear
and intimidation" - Darell White disagrees.

"That's like saying that everybody who works in Fort McMurray is a
crackhead, and that's just not true," said the health and safety
manager for Thompson and its 1,200 employees.

Goodnough, a former Thompson employee, and White also disagree on the
cause of a collision at the Highway 63 twinning project just south of
the city last week that saw one of Goodnough's colleagues back a
40-ton rock truck into the one he was sitting in.

He says drugs and unsafe working conditions were to blame, while
White says Goodnough was simply parked in the wrong place.

White says Thompson follows the letter of the law when it comes to
drug testing, as well as the rules set out by the big producers it
works for, such as Syncrude.

But Barrie Harrison, a spokesman for Alberta Occupational Health and
Safety, says that when it comes to drug-testing laws, "there's kind
of a grey area in the province right now."

Harrison referred to last year's court ruling that the Kellogg Brown
and Root Company discriminated against an employee when it fired him
from an oilsands project near Fort McMurray after he tested positive
for marijuana.

He added that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is also in the
process of revising its testing policy in an effort to balance the
need for a safe working environment with individual rights.

"Our position is, of course, that drugs and alcohol at the workplace
should not be tolerated," he said. "But creating legislation to
monitor drug-testing remains controversial."

Harrison says new statistics show a drop of more than nine per cent
in the lost-time claim rate in the oil and gas sector over the last
five years. But he adds that anyone concerned about safety in their
workplace can call, even anonymously, the Workplace Health and Safety
Call Centre at 415-8690 or 1-866-415-8690.