TOP COURT QUASHES DRUG TEST RULING

No Human Rights Protection In Workplace Firing, Judges Say

Alberta's top court has dealt a blow to the province's pot smokers
with a ruling upholding workplace drug-testing policies that were at risk.

In a new decision from the Alberta Court of Appeal, a trio of judges
overturned a controversial ruling from Justice Sheilah Martin that
drew scorn from 2006 Tory leadership candidate Ted Morton.

In that case, Martin ruled that a Fort McMurray employer
discriminated against a worker named John Chiasson by firing him over
a positive drug-test result.

The case turned on the question of whether Chiasson's use of
marijuana in 2002 qualified him as disabled and whether, as a result,
his employer had a duty to accommodate his condition.

While Chiasson himself admitted he was only a casual user of the
drug, Martin accepted that in firing everyone who tests positive for
drugs, engineering and construction company Kellog, Brown and Root
(KBR) had essentially treated him as though he were an addict and
therefore disabled.

As a result, the company had a duty to be more flexible in its
testing policies by, for example, allowing for a washout period that
would let recreational drug users get the drug out of their blood,
Martin ruled. The theory was that occasional smokers don't
necessarily pose a safety risk at work.

The Court of Appeal judges, however, have ruled otherwise.

"Extending human rights protections to situations resulting in
placing the lives of others at risk flies in the face of logic," they
wrote, noting that despite Chiasson's insistence that his drug use
was his business, the effects of marijuana can linger for days.

Morton, now sustainable resources minister, called the previous
decision a bad, judge-made law.

"It puts the rights of some guy to smoke pot above the safety of his
fellow workers," he told Sun Media at the time of Martin's ruling.

"It is bad law because it creates new rules that cannot be found in
the Alberta Human Rights Code.

"Drug use, much less illegal drug use, is not even listed as a
'disability' in the act. Nor was it ever intended to be."