A Toronto court is hearing arguments today over whether TTC employees should be subject to random drug and alcohol testing, a policy which was supposed to be implemented on March 1 but has now been bumped pack to April 1.

The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, which represents more than 10,000 TTC workers, has filed an injunction over the TTC’s Fitness for Duty policy and the case is headed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto today.

The random testing, which will affect 20 per cent of all TTC employees in “safety sensitive” positions, was approved by the TTC board at a meeting on Nov. 30, 2016.

The TTC says a third-party will generate a random list and employees who are selected will have to submit to a breathalyzer for alcohol and provide a saliva sample for drug testing.

Under the transit agency’s previous policy, only new employees were subjected to drug and alcohol testing. The TTC was also able to test active employees when there was “reasonable cause.”

In a factum submitted ahead of this week’s hearing, the TTC said there have been 291 documented incidents where workplace safety concerns arose in connection with employees. In 141 of those incidents, the TTC suspected or confirmed that alcohol or drug use was a factor.

“Between 2010 and the present, over 11,000 drug and alcohol tests have been conducted. The results of those tests, as well as accident and other evidence, indicates that drug and alcohol continues to be a significant problem for the TTC, a threat to its safe operation and to the safety of the public,” the factum read.

The TTC went on to say that between October 2010 and December 2016, at least 15 transit operators were charged with impaired driving. During that same time frame, the TTC says they received 45 reports of TTC employees using and or trafficking drugs or using alcohol while at work.

Bob Kinnear, the president of the ATU Local 113, told CP24 Tuesday that the union has questions how the TTC gathered their statistics.

"We believe some of the statistics they’ve incorporated into that report are from incidents that may have occurred off the job... Despite that, even with the numbers they have, it doesn’t prove a systemic problem," he said.

"The Supreme Court has already ruled in order for an employer to impose random drug testing, they have to prove a systemic problem."

He said the larger problem is with the efficacy of the testing itself.

"This swab testing is inconclusive. The science community has a consensus that it is not conclusive and does not determine impairment at the time," Kinnear added.

"So what the TTC is asking out employees to do is accept a form of testing and hope that the TTC gets it right every single time. And if they get it wrong just once and have a positive false test, that could mean someone’s employment."

The TTC had initially said random drug and alcohol testing would be implemented on March 1 but that date has been pushed back to April 1 due to the injunction application.

"This case is really about whether or not an employer in a unionized workplace can on his own, unilaterally, decide whether they want to test people for drugs and alcohol," Clayton Ruby, the lawyer representing the TTC union, told CP24 Tuesday.

"The criminal code allows it but employers are not allowed in Canada to do that. Not without a really extremely dangerous workplace. This one isn’t."