Alberta government moving to adopt daylight time year-round

The Alberta government wants to eliminate seasonal clock changes by adopting daylight time all year.

Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally said Monday that his government intends to eliminate spring and fall time changes and stick with daylight time, which leaves more light at the end of the day instead of the morning.

“It was time to stop talking about it and to take some action to get it done,” he told reporters at the legislature.

Nally’s press secretary said the minister would introduce related legislation this week.

Premier Danielle Smith mused about the move last month after British Columbia’s government announced it would enact legislation passed in 2019 to stick with one time zone all year, which aligns that province with Yukon.

Nally said that left Alberta sandwiched between two provinces that do not change their clocks. Saskatchewan uses central standard time year-round.

Although Albertans voted in a 2021 provincial referendum to narrowly reject adopting permanent daylight time, Nally said the situation has changed and the province must adapt.

His office wouldn’t confirm when the proposed change would take effect.

Later on Monday, Northwest Territories Premier R. J. Simpson announced that territory would also adopt a year-round standard time, with details still to be decided.

Most agricultural producers wanted to eliminate the clock changes and add light at the end of the day, said Aaron Stein, executive director of the Alberta Federation of Agriculture.

Cows, notorious for their inability to read clocks, are hungry when the sun rises, he said. Farmers are left slowly adjusting feeding schedules twice a year during spring forward and fall back.

Stein added that it’s also hazardous for tired farm workers to operate heavy equipment.

“Time changes are difficult on the body, difficult on scheduling [and] don’t afford a lot of consistency, which is key when you’re an agricultural producer,” he said.

The proposed change could also be a relief for residents in the Lloydminster area, whose lives often straddle the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Lloydminster follows Alberta’s clock, but for half of the year, people in the surrounding area on the Saskatchewan side have their timepieces set for an hour ahead.

Ryan Turner, president of the oil well service company Renown Down Hole Solutions, said the time difference can sometimes cause confusion, inadvertently leading workers to arrive an hour late for a job in Saskatchewan.

“It gets expensive quick when there’s a screw-up,” he said.

Turner said he hopes the two provinces following the same clock will make things simpler and convenient.

Out-of-sync light hard on the body, expert says

University of Calgary psychology professor Michael Antle said he believes adopting one time, all year is a good decision, however, he thinks Alberta should be on standard time, not daylight time.

Antle, who researches circadian rhythms, said come winter, there’s going to be a mismatch between the paltry hours of sunlight in Alberta and the digits on the clock, and that’s hard on bodies.

For example, on the shortest day of the year, the sun will rise at 10:02 a.m. in Fort McMurray.

“Your body doesn’t want to do that. It fights against that,” Antle said.

He said research has also found changing the clocks can contribute to heart disease, diabetes or fatigue, causing traffic collisions.

Antle said Alberta government officials did consult with him on the decision, and he recommended standard time because sunrise would more naturally align with the social rhythms of getting up in the morning and going to work or school.

“The bigger the mismatch between that, the worse your social jet lag, the more health consequences that come with that,” he said.

Alberta mountain resorts might struggle with 10 a.m. sunrises, Antle noted, because they can’t let people ski in the dark.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said he believes all of the time talk is the government’s attempt to distract from its challenges, including the difficulty Albertans have in accessing timely health care.

Nenshi said the move also raises questions about how much Smith’s government respects direct democracy initiatives such as referendums, given that the decision doesn’t align with the 2021 vote.

“I would like to go with both Albertans’ opinions and expert opinion on this instead of the premier’s capricious decision,” he said.