Suncor’s Random Drug Testing Policy Remains on Hold

An Alberta court set aside Suncor’s bid to overturn the injunction barring it from enforcing its random drug and alcohol testing policy for oil sands workers pending an arbitrator’s ruling on the policy’s privacy implications. In Sept., the province’s high court ruled that random testing was a justifiable safety measure given the evidence of rampant drug use at the sites. But in Dec., the appeals court issued the injunction saying that the potential privacy harms outweighed the safety concerns and couldn’t be undone by money damages if the policy were found to be illegal. In this latest round, the court has upheld the injunction after concluding that the appeals court didn’t make any obvious legal errors in granting it [Unifor, Local 707A v Suncor Energy Inc, 2018 ABCA 75 (CanLII), Feb. 28, 2018].