The United States took one step closer to abandoning the practice of changing the clocks every spring and fall, raising the question: how would such a move down south impact Canada?
This week, the U.S. Congress voted in favour of a bill that would put an end to twice-yearly time change and stay on daylight saving time year-round. The bill now goes to the U.S. Senate.
Like the U.S., Canadians in a number of provinces still change their clocks twice a year — forward one hour in the spring and then back an hour in the fall.
While there are indications the bill — dubbed the Sunshine Protection Act — will face some hurdles in the Senate, Prof. Peter Graefe from McMaster University says if it does become law, Canadian provinces would follow suit.
“Some might decide to wait a few months to go through the first time change and see whether Americans had second thoughts or if there were problems that emerged,” Graefe said.
“But I think soon after they would fall into line with the American program.”
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Canada was quick to line up with the U.S. when its government extended the daylight saving time period by several weeks in 2007.
While Washington has been debating a permanent end to the time change for years, momentum has also been building in Canada.
Saskatchewan, Yukon, B.C. and Alberta have all abandoned the practice. While Saskatchewan has kept the same time year-round since 1966, the latter three have only ditched the time switch in recent years.
Manitoba and Nunavut are currently mulling their options after Alberta and B.C. both declared that they won’t be changing the clocks again after this March’s “spring forward.”
The eastern provinces have either been noncommittal to keeping a consistent time or are waiting for a collective move.
Ontario has a law on the books that says the province will stick to daylight saving hours all year — if Quebec and New York do the same. Quebec, on the other hand, has made no commitment.
Atlantic premiers mused publicly about adopting permanent daylight time in 2022, but said they would not pursue it unless others take the lead.
Liberal MP Marie-France Lalonde has promised to bring forward a bill in Parliament that, if passed, would push the federal government to lead talks with the provinces in an effort to establish a set clock that would hold year-round across the country.
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Graefe said one of the main concerns that gets raised in the debate around ending the clock change in Canada without the U.S. doing the same revolves around the economy.
For example, the auto industry which relies on a “just-on-time” delivery model could face complications if Ontario and Michigan suddenly have an hour difference.
But Graefe says these concerns can be “overstated” and that scheduling software can easily account for the difference. He argued that’s likely why B.C. and Alberta went ahead with dropping the time change even though their border states haven’t.
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Still, Graefe said he thinks there would be a push to ensure Canada is aligned with its southern neighbour if the bill becomes law.
“I think the Canadian business community generally doesn’t like to see Canada on different time than the United States,” he said. “It makes us look kind of foreign and strange, and there’s a desire to just be seen as part of a larger North American economic space.”
But Rébecca Robillard, co-chair of the Canadian Sleep Research Consortium, says provinces may want to think twice before getting into bed with permanent daylight saving time.
“Daylight saving time is actually an artificial time that’s pushed back later than the real time that’s set by the natural cycle of the sun,” she said.
Detractors in the U.S. say permanent daylight saving time would lead to darker and potentially more hazardous winter mornings where children will be waiting for school buses and parents will be driving to work in darkness.
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One U.S. representative countered the Sunshine Protection Act with the Sunshine for Our Kids Act, which would establish a permanent standard time, as currently observed during the winter months.
Robillard noted that darker winter mornings would be amplified in Canada’s north if daylight saving time is adopted year-round.
“We need a lot of that morning light to synchronize biological functions to optimize our health, our productivity, our safety and well-being,” she said.
Robillard said that the human body more naturally aligns with standard time which helps regulate heart rate and temperature. She said moving to permanent daylight saving time could throw off some of this regulation, leading to an increased risk of health complications such as stroke.
If more provinces are going to ditch the semi-annual clock change, Robillard said, then permanent standard time is the healthier way to go.
“If we opt for permanent and standard time, we opt for following the natural cycle of the sun, which our internal biological clock has been evolving to follow [since] the dawn of humanity and even before that,” she said.
