Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry News
Court of Appeal Rules in Favour of Suncor
The legal battle over random drug testing in its northeastern Alberta oilsands facilities has ended for Suncor Energy, with a ruling in favour of the company. Since 2012, when Suncor began randomly testing its safety-sensitive employees for drug and alcohol workplace...
Toronto Transit Commission Receives Award for their Drug Testing Programme
In acknowledgement of the employee drug and alcohol policy it implemented on May 8th of this year, the TTC has been awarded the Ontario Safety League’s Award of Excellence for Public Safety. Ontario Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca presented the annual award...
Fentanyl Update: Vancouver
On August 21st of this year, drug overdoses in Vancouver surpassed the number of overdoses recorded throughout the city in all of 2016. Largely the result of fentanyl, a potentially fatal opiate, these deaths have prompted Vancouver Coastal Health to open more...
Cannabis 101 – The Mystery of Marijuana
Cannabis, Marijuana, Marihuana, THC, Cannabidiol What’s the deal with all these different substances? We will explore all of these in an upcoming series of articles. Before the 1930’s the plant was known simply as cannabis, a genus of flowering plant in the family...
TTC Employees to be Reinstated After Completing a Return-to-work Programme
If on the job impairment results from legitimate addiction, employees of the TTC could be given a second chance. On May 8th 2017, the TTC implemented a controversial random drug and alcohol testing policy after Associate Chief Justice of the Superior Court Frank...
Ontario Announces Framework for the Sale of Cannabis
Following federal legislation introduced in the House of Commons in April to legalize and regulate the sale and distribution of cannabis on or before July 1st, 2018, Ontario has become the first province or territory to announce a framework that will manage the use...
Random Testing Proposed for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is proposing that random drug and alcohol testing should become mandatory for nuclear facility workers in high-risk positions. The Commission held a public meeting in August to decide whether or not to move forward with...
Workers With Disabilities Can Be Terminated Says Supreme Court
In its June 15th ruling, The Supreme Court found no evidence of discrimination in the 2005 dismissal case of Ian Stewart from Elk Valley Coal, demonstrating that the termination of an employee with a disability is not always a breach of human rights. The case involved...
Quest Diagnostics 2017 Annual Drug Study Summary
Quest Diagnostics released its yearly summary of the Drug Testing Index study which analyzed the information from over ten million drug test results covering the U.S. in three categories of workers; those who are federally regulated and in safety-sensitive positions,...