Drug testing a booming business in Manitoba
Last Updated: Friday, February 6, 2009 | 12:40 PM ET
CBC News
In the face of a recession one sector of Winnipeg's economy is booming: labs that test employees for drug and alcohol use.
The Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, which did the occasional test a few years ago, now has two full-time employees doing 2,000 tests a year — that's twice as much as last year.
Precision Health, a private lab in Winnipeg, has also seen the demand for substance abuse tests spike from a handful of tests each month in 1995 to 5,000 a year now.
Owner Colleen Robinson is in the process of expanding her business to another location in Manitoba to meet growing demand, which is coming from such industries as trucking and construction, as well as from aviation.
"A lot of it has to do, I think, with people wanting to ensure that people are operating equipment in a safe manner. So we see a lot of it from industries [associated] with handling of equipment," said John Borody, spokesperson with the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, who noted that sports organizations are also using the services of the labs.
'They want to make sure that they are able to function at their full capacity'.—Colleen Robinson, Precision Health
Manitoba does not require workers on construction sites to undergo drug and alcohol testing as is done in British Columbia, but that's not stopping Manitoba companies from having their employees tested, said Robinson.
She believes they are simply being proactive, ensuring their employees are "able to be of full sound mind when they are doing the job," she said. "They want to make sure that they are able to function at their full capacity."
More companies are making it part of the way they do business, said Robinson, who has recently hired two more people at Precision Health to keep up with the demand.
