growing market

Very interesting article in yesterday's Times Colonist (British Columbia, Canada). Suggests the potential of the emerging Canadian testing market - as well as the problems with urine testing (one of the major inhibitors of expanded testing programs). Oral testing is the way of the future - and which company is about to become the best placed in this market?

Forced drug tests stir ethical worries

Rob Shaw and Cindy E. Harnett, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, October 18, 2007

Forcing employees to take drug tests at work is a contentious issue, complicated by human-rights legislation, contradictory court rulings and U.S. pressure, say industry representatives and civil liberties experts.

B.C. Ferries president David Hahn said yesterday Canada should follow the United States in workplace drug testing. Such testing has increased dramatically in North America over the past 20 years, chiefly in the U.S., where it's done by 95 per cent of top Fortune 500 companies.

But in Canada, the situation remains legally and ethically unclear.


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Font:****The federal Human Rights Commission prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability, which includes drug or alcohol addiction. It has opposed pre-employment and random drug tests, but is reviewing those policies after recent court rulings, says its 2006 annual report, but it has yet to release new guidelines.

"Testing reveals all kinds of personal information that has nothing to do with drugs," said Murray Mollard, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. For example, it can reveal medical conditions or pregnancy, he said. As well, watching someone urinate into a cup is degrading and intrusive, he said.

Canadian courts have sent mixed messages regarding the legality of drug testing in the workplace. Alberta courts recently overruled a pre-employment drug-test policy by Kellogg Brown & Root Co. after a recreational marijuana user failed the test and wasn't hired.

That case is under appeal this month and is being watched closely in the legal community. Lawyers for both sides are arguing about whether drug tests violate human rights, even though recreational drug use is illegal.

On the other side of the legal spectrum, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld forest company Weyerhaeuser's drug-testing policy last year and prevented a complainant from going before the province's human-rights tribunal.

B.C. supports drug testing, Premier Gordon Campbell said yesterday. "I think everyone deserves to know that people are in no way impaired in terms of carrying out their operational obligations," he said, when asked about B.C. Ferries. "How we do that in Canada is something we're going to have to work with the national Transportation Safety Board on."

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association agrees companies should ensure those in important safety-related jobs, such as steering a ferry, aren't impaired, said Mollard. But he said drug tests can't beat "good old human supervision."

Workplace drug testing has declined in the U.S. and Canada since peaking around 10 years ago, said Scott Macdonald, assistant director at the Centre for Addictions Research B.C.

B.C. companies test employees for drug use more than any other province, except Alberta. Drug testing is performed by 18.2 per cent of companies with 100 or more employees in B.C. That compares with 4.6 per cent in Ontario and 25.4 per cent in Alberta, said Macdonald.

One reason is that B.C. has more resource and transportation companies, such as forestry, mining, construction, shipping, rail, trucking and aviation, he said.

He argues that urinalysis, a common method for drug testing, is poor because it detects usage over a period of time. "They are measuring more lifestyle [issues] rather than drug use on the job," he said.

A urine test detects marijuana use over about a three- to four-week period, cocaine use within three to five days and heroin and opiates in an even tighter timeframe. Blood tests, he said, detect active metabolites in the body that indicate drug use within about eight hours.

-- with files from Lindsay Kines