JOB DRUG-TESTING DEBATE NOT OVER

A court ruling against a fired marijuana user won't stop the
province's human rights commission seeking changes to workplace
drug-testing policies, a lawyer on the case said yesterday.

"I think automatic termination is troubling because you're denying
someone employment," said Arman Chak, an Alberta Human Rights and
Citizenship Commission lawyer who represented the fired worker, John
Chiasson, during a recent court case.

Chak noted the commission hasn't yet decided on whether to challenge
a ruling from the Alberta Court of Appeal rejecting Chiasson's claims
that a Fort McMurray employer's drug-testing policies were
discriminatory. While Chiasson himself admitted he was only a
recreational pot smoker, a lower-court judge had earlier ruled that
in firing anyone who tested positive for drugs, engineering and
construction company Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) had essentially
treated him as an addict and therefore disabled.

Alberta's human-rights legislation forbids discrimination on the
basis of disability. The appeal judges, however, have now ruled that
safety concerns justify workplace drug-testing policies, thereby
overturning the earlier court decision.

For Chak, the debate isn't over. "Is that the best way to deal with
him? I think that's a level of disrespect that we don't expect in
Alberta," he said of Chiasson's firing.

Chak pointed to evidence that a urine test showing the presence of
marijuana doesn't necessarily mean a person is impaired. He noted
that in Chiasson's case, the worker had started his job as a
receiving clerk at a Syncrude Canada construction site by the time
the test results came back. By then, it had been weeks since he had
smoked the pot.

"Those metabolites in the blood system do not prove impairment on the
job," said Bob Cyre of Edmonton's Mobile Access Compassionate
Resources Organization Society, which assists people who use
marijuana for medical purposes.