Slide show images of pot-loving goofballs Cheech and Chong driving stoned and Snoop Dogg hauling on a big bong drew big laughs at a conference this week, but the topic at hand was no laughing matter.

Canada will become the first G7 country to make pot use legal federally, bringing with it many economic, regulatory, social and health challenges for Canadian workplaces. At the same time, the use of medical marijuana is becoming more commonplace, so the accommodation of those employees has emerged as a prevalent issue facing Canadian workplaces.

“I think employers are going to come to me (last minute) because they’re not ready for this,” said Bill Howatt, chief research and development officer of workforce productivity with Morneau Shepell in Toronto.

“It’s going to be ‘Oh my God, it’s really happening’,” said Howatt, who works for Canada’s largest provider of employee assistance programs in Canada.

According to the 2017 Canadian Cannabis Survey, 23 per cent of full- and part-time workers use weed and 39 per cent said they have driven under the influence of cannabis.

The federal government now says legal marijuana won’t be available for sale before August. Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor says once the Senate holds a final vote by June 7, provinces will need eight to 12 weeks to prepare. (The Canadian Press)

What Dr. Melissa Snider-Adler of DriverCheck Inc. says she found shocking was that 21.5 per cent of the nearly 10,000 respondents in the survey admitted to using marijuana to get high before or during work last year, and 7.7 per cent said they do so weekly — and even daily.

“We need employees to be fit for work . . . and it is your responsibility to ensure a safe workplace because companies are liable,” she said. Snider-Adler is chief medical review officer at DriverCheck, one of the leading providers of workplace medical testing and assessments.

She spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Conference Board of Canada’s “Marijuana @ Work” conference this week in the lead-up to legalization of recreational cannabis across the country. (Ottawa has just pushed back the date of implementation from July 1 to later this summer to give the provinces a few months to prepare after an expected Senate vote in June.)

Employers in attendance were mostly from “safety sensitive” industries such as construction and transportation companies, the oil patch and health care providers, along with the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP. Most already have a zero tolerance drug and alcohol workplace policy in place, but wanted to know the implications of adding marijuana to the mix.

The short answer, said Snider-Adler, is that it should be treated no differently than when an employee shows up to work reeking of booze and staggering around the office, or zombied out on opiates like Oxycontin.

“I don’t care that it’s legal. You can’t come to work high on cannabis,” she said.

“It’s the same with alcohol. It’s legal, but employers don’t provide a separate room for people to go drink all day, so it won’t be different for cannabis.”

Meanwhile, Ottawa hasn’t provided any standards or guidance as of yet to employers grappling with legalization, she noted. Bill C-45 makes no mention of how it will impact the workplace, contributing to the Wild West atmosphere already swirling around the nascent industry.

And Health Canada’s website makes only passing reference to it to date. It says Ottawa “heard from employers who expressed concern with the impact on workplace safety particularly for safety-sensitive industries such as health and the oil and gas industry . . . Impairment in the workplace is not a new issue, and is not limited to cannabis. This issue has been a topic of ongoing dialogue among federal, provincial and territorial ministers of labour.”

Employers were urged by several speakers to update current workplace policies and procedures around impairment and addiction to prepare for what’s to come with cannabis.

“It’s a concern that’s been growing, and we know we are not alone in that growing concern,” said Megan MacRae, the TTC’s executive director of human resources.

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“The TTC is not taking any view on the legalization of marijuana. Our interest and our focus is on safety in the workplace. The steps we’ve taken really pre-date the discussion around legalization,” she said of the TTC’s implementation of random drug testing in May, 2017.

She said it took six years and a few accidents resulting in fatalities — some of which were linked in part to marijuana use — to finally implement oral swab testing of TTC workers last year. Urinalysis is also done to certify the transit commission’s new hires.

MacRae noted there is a sense in the overall employer community that not enough attention is being paid by government and law enforcement to workplace impacts. She warned companies looking to go the random testing route to expect legal and union challenges amid the anticipated increase in pot use.

“Random testing is not about, ‘ah ha, I got you’,” she said. “Random testing is a mechanism to further enhance safety and to deter unsafe behaviour.”

Beyond that, she advised having support mechanisms in place, whether internal or from contract service providers.

“You need sophisticated occupational health programs,” she told the audience.

Julie Daugherty, certified substance abuse program administrator at Boeing, said there’s also no such thing as “over-communicating” to both workers and managers to promote safety in the workplace.

Besides a zero tolerance policy, the aerospace giant has an ongoing campaign that pushes the concept “be smart, be sober, be safe,” and to let everyone know there is an Employee Assistance Plan there to help.

“We work with the managers to focus on impairment indicators in the workplace: the bloodshot eyes, the odour of marijuana and slurred speech,” she said.

“We have also ramped up our employee training materials to talk to them about: ‘Do you want to be working next to co-worker who has impaired judgment or slow reaction times?’ — which are really critical from a safety standpoint,” said Daugherty.

“This topic is so big, we really need more education around it,” said Howatt from Morneau Shepell.

“We’re really learning all of this on the fly.”