DUNFORD'S MESSAGE IN A SPECIMEN BOTTLE

Clint "Everyone Pee in the Bottle" Dunford is at it again. Ralph Klein's
controversial human resources and employment minister is clearly one of
those B-teamers around the cabinet table who are increasingly getting out
of line with what Albertans are thinking.

And the Red Tory from Lethbridge is likely one of the key reasons why 45%
of Albertans surveyed in the recent Leger Marketing-Sun Media poll feel
that the premier isn't the leader he used to be.

Dunford comes up with stuff that never ceases to amaze.

His latest gaffe is to start musing about bringing in tough provincial
legislation to allow random drug testing on the job.

"We've got to deal with impairment in the workplace," Dunford stressed this
week, although he does admit that forcing Alberta workers to randomly
provide a urine sample at work might be "highly controversial."

Of course, the Alberta Federation of Labour jumped all over the Tories.
President Kerry Barrett called it a result of "impaired thinking."

And she cited research by the government's own Alberta Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Commission that only 5.6% of workers use alcohol on or before the
job. Presumably, that doesn't include business lunches.

When it comes to drugs, the number drops dramatically to 1.7%.

The report concludes that random testing isn't needed, unless the abuse
"constitutes a genuine risk to the workplace operations or public safety."
So you have to wonder what Dunford is up to here.

"It's like using amputation to deal with a hangnail," Barrett spat.

It also raises the question of whether Dunford ran this by anyone,
considering a lot of Tory MLAs would likely fail Clint's test if they were
breathalyzed coming back from supper break, if it included a couple of
drinks, for another long, boring night sitting of the legislature.

It's also a little ironic that Alberta liquor revenue is booked to hit $551
million this year.

"The issue is not whether a person uses drugs or alcohol on the weekend in
their own home," Barrett said. "That is none of the employer's business."

Especially when the employer and regulator is actually selling the alcohol
in question.

This is not just a misquote or a musing, as Dunford is now claiming. He
first raised the issue over a year ago.

And he appears just as determined to alienate another key support group of
the Klein Tories - Alberta's organized construction workers.

The Alberta Building Trades Council broke labour ranks and stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with the premier in his opposition to the Ottawa
Liberals' Kyoto accord, which could halt the tarsands boom and bring the
provincial economy to a standstill if ever fully implemented.

Obviously, construction workers know where their cheques are coming from,
and it's not windmills.

Yet Dunford is now pushing hard for legislation that will not only make it
illegal to organize non-union worksites with union members who get hired on.

He also wants to ban unions from using their own pension funds to invest in
building projects, with the understanding that only union labour is hired.

Ralph Klein has a strange way of rewarding his friends.

It only got worse for Clint yesterday, as the Dunford disaster came
full-circle.

Dunford was one of the soft-centre cabinet ministers who cut the legs out
from under Learning Minister Lyle Oberg in 2002 and agreed to settle the
teachers strikes with binding arbitration, plus the multibillion-dollar
learning commission report that predictably got hijacked by the
special-interest groups.

Two years after the teachers got a 14% arbitrated settlement, talks have
broken down, almost all Alberta teachers union locals will be without a
contract by Sept. 1, and the two largest - Edmonton and Calgary public -
are set to hold a strike vote on Monday.