Alberta's Top Court Puts Random Workplace Drug And Alcohol Testing On Hold

The Alberta Court of Appeal has once again weighed in on the controversial issue of random drug and alcohol testing, in a decision that balanced employee privacy rights against workplace health and safety. In Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Local 707 v. Suncor Energy Inc., the majority upheld an injunction prohibiting Suncor from imposing a new policy of random drug and alcohol testing on some 2,890 union members in "safety-sensitive" or "specified" positions. 

In reaching its decision, the Court observed that the non-consensual taking of bodily fluids was a "substantial affront to an individual's privacy rights" and that the new policy cast a wide net, in that it captured employees whose work may not involve a real risk of accident. The Court noted that Suncor had experienced "only" seven fatalities at its workplace in the oil sands over the twelve-year period from 2000 to 2012, with "just" three of those killed having been under the influence of