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ARTICLE · 03 APRIL 2014

Alberta Arbitrators Strike Oil Company’s Random Alcohol And Drug Testing Policy

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Employers looking to Alberta for a legal precedent to support their random alcohol and drug testing policies will need to keep looking.

CanadaEmployment and HR
Ryan Smith
Ryan Smith
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Employers looking to Alberta for a legal precedent to support their random alcohol and drug testing policies will need to keep looking, after Alberta arbitrators deemed Suncor Energy Inc.'s random testing policy to be an unreasonable exercise of Suncor's management rights.

Industry observers had been following Unifor, Local 707A v Suncor Energy Inc closely after the Supreme Court of Canada's decision last year in Irving, which determined that employers must meet a high standard to justify random alcohol testing of employees. Until the Suncor decision, which was released this week, the high Irving threshold had been challenged only once in Canadian law.

In that case (Sarnia), an Ontario arbitrator applied the Irving standards and struck an alcohol and drug policy, because not enough specific evidence was provided to justify testing contractors for alcohol and drugs before allowing them to enter the employer's worksite. (We published articles about Irving and Sar

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