Cannabis Testing And Employee Dismissal – Is Your Policy Ready For October 2018?

Canadian employers will soon encounter a new landscape when it comes to drug and alcohol testing in safety sensitive workplaces as cannabis use is set to be legalized in October 2018. Employers are faced with balancing employee privacy rights in terms of their off duty conduct, with safety concerns in the workplace. Of paramount concern for employers is whether an employee is impaired from performing the duties of his or her job.

A common pitfall comes from the fact that uranalysis testing cannot prove current impairment of an employee due to cannabis. Arbitrators have consistently held that something more than a positive test for cannabis must be relied on to prove an employee was impaired at work. For this reason, the best preventative measure is to carefully train supervisors, human resources personnel, and occupational health and safety committee members, to monitor and record tangible evidence of a worker's impairment, including the smell of cannabis, out of