CLEARER RULES WANTED FOR EMPLOYEE DRUG-TESTING

Alberta Human Rights Watchdog Mulls Oilsands Worker's Firing

EDMONTON -- Alberta's human-rights watchdog may appeal a
precedent-setting court ruling that found an oilsands contractor
acted legally in firing a new employee who tested positive for
marijuana five years ago.

Although the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission hasn't
decided to seek leave to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of
Canada, the rules governing employee drug testing need to be clearer,
commission legal counsel Janice Ashcroft said Wednesday.

In the summer of 2002, John Chiasson took a pre-employment drug test
and began working for the construction company Kellogg Brown & Root
as an inspector at Syncrude Canada. After nine days on the job, he
was told he had failed the drug test, at which point he admitted
smoking marijuana five days before his test. He was subsequently
fired from the Syncrude project.

In 2006, the Court of Queen's Bench ruled that the contractor's drug
test policy treated recreational cannabis users as addicts and
therefore disabled.

Discrimination on the basis of perceived disability is illegal under
Alberta's Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.

But a three-judge panel of the Alberta Court of Appeal has concluded
the contractor's policy did not treat Chiasson as an addict.

"Rather it perceives that persons who use drugs at all are a safety
risk in an already dangerous place," said the ruling.

Ashcroft said there is little case law on the issue.

The decision in the oilsands case is the only one so far by Alberta's
appeal court.

Appeal Judges Elizabeth McFadyen, Keith Ritter and Jack Watson said
in their written decision the evidence shows the effects of cannabis
linger for days.

"We see this case as no different than that of a trucking or taxi
company, which has a policy requiring its employees to refrain from
the use of alcohol for some time before the employee drives one of
the employer's vehicles," the appeal court judges say.

"Extending human rights protections to situations resulting in
placing the lives of others at risk flies in the face of logic."