Walking the Centre Line: Balancing an Employee's Right to Privacy in Drug and Alcohol Policies in the Atlantic Offshore Oil Industry

Should the principles applied to drug and alcohol testing on land be imported into the Atlantic offshore oil and gas industry? The authors take the position that there is room for the notion that the application of principles derived from safety sensitive land based industry ought not to be applied in a perfunctory or rote manner to the Atlantic offshore environment. The case law, since Entrop, shows a judicial tendency to apply the requirements established by the obiter dictum of Entrop. (Etrop dealt with safety sensitive but land-based industry.) The danger is that the principles, as developed by and since Entrop, may be applied by adjudicators perfunctorily without due regard to the unique and supervenient risks inherent in the offshore marine environment. The authors propose that aspects of drug and alcohol testing policies directed at managing the risks of impairment in the Atlantic offshore environment should be found to be valid notwithstanding that the same policies may, in land based safety sensitive industries, encounter difficulty under current interpretation of relevant statutes such as humans rights legislation.