Clarifying Irving: Can an Alberta Employer Implement a Random Drug and Alcohol Testing Policy in a Safety Sensitive Workplace?

Despite a new decision on the issue from the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench (the "Court") on May 18, 2016¹, the answer to this question remains "maybe." The Court has, however, provided us with a measure of clarity concerning what degree of evidence of a drug and alcohol problem in the workplace an employer will have to produce in order to justify a random testing policy: notably, the threshold identified by the Court is not as high as the one identified by a majority of the arbitration board (the "Majority") in Suncor Energy Inc. and Unifor, Local 707A (Random Alcohol and Drug Testing Policy)² ("Suncor Arbitration").

The leading case on this point is Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, Local 30 v. Irving Pulp & Paper Ltd.³, ("Irving"), in which the Supreme Court of Canada held that employers must be able to show "sufficient" evidence of a drug and alcohol problem in the workplace in order to legally justify randomly testing workers in