TTC Random Drug Testing Decision: What Workers Need to Know

In July 2026, arbitrator Laura Trachuk released a long award in Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 113 v. Toronto Transit Commission. She found the TTC’s random drug and alcohol testing program unreasonable, contrary to the collective agreement, and inconsistent with employees’ rights under section 8 of the Charter. She ordered the program stopped. The TTC board later directed the organization to end it.

This is not a story about whether impairment belongs in a safety-sensitive job. It does not. Reasonable cause testing and post-incident testing were not the issue. The issue was suspicionless, random testing of a huge share of the workforce, with discipline attached, without proof of a workplace problem that could justify that intrusion.

Irving is still the test

Canadian arbitrators have been living with Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, Local 30 v. Irving Pulp & Paper, Ltd. for more than a decade. A safety-sensitive workplace is not enough, except in extreme cases. The employer has to show evidence of a general problem with substance use in that workplace — not society, not “the industry,” not a fear of what cannabis legalization might do. Trachuk put the onus where it belongs: on the TTC. Irving is a testing case. It is not Wm. Scott, which is the usual test for discipline and discharge.

The evidence did not get them there. Use in the TTC workforce looked like use in the rest of the country. That is not an enhanced workplace risk. You cannot random-test 87 percent of 16,000 people because the public is anxious and the job is important.

Presence is not impairment

The award is also about the science the employer wanted to treat as a verdict. Oral fluid at the TTC’s cut-offs — including THC at 10 ng/ml — did not reliably identify unfitness for duty. A positive showed presence. Presence is not proof the operator was impaired on the board. Treating it as proof is how you fire people who were not unfit, and how you miss people who were.

Random testing is a search. Charter section 8 does not vanish at the barn door because the employer wrote “safety” on the policy.Reading Trachuk with Irving in hand

What this is not

• It is not a ban on all testing. Reasonable cause and post-incident programs still exist, and they still have to be reasonable.
• It is not a licence to be impaired at work.
• It is not automatically binding on every other employer in Ontario. Arbitrators decide case by case. The framework is the same. The evidence will not be.

How a steward uses this

If your employer is rolling out random testing, the questions are the Irving questions. Where is the workplace-specific evidence? What is already in place for cause and post-incident? What does the test actually measure? What happens to a worker who blows a positive and is not impaired? Who was consulted? Was the union at the table, or was this posted as a “policy update” on a Friday?

Demand the data. Demand the methodology. Demand the cut-offs. A policy grievance is built for this. Do not let the first grievance be a termination that has to unwind a program the size of a transit system.