Time for a change

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/11/2023 (702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT’S another one of those fall traditions and it’s one I despise the most. The switch back from daylight saving to standard time happens in the wee hours of the morning this weekend (Sunday morning to be exact), meaning that by suppertime Monday, it will be dark, and we won’t really start to see light again after work until about February.

No wonder Guy Maddin talks of Winnipeg’s back lanes as “illicit things best not discussed,” shrouded in darkness in his 2007 docu-fantasia My Winnipeg. The end of daylight saving time reminds us that the next six months will be spent driving those “pillow-soft” back alleys from home to work with snow past our door panels and freezing temperatures.

Perhaps it’s time to follow Yukon’s lead and stay permanently in daylight saving time instead. Perhaps it’s time for Manitoba should “set it and forget it.”

Canada has been making the switch from daylight saving time (DST) to standard time and back for more than 100 years in some cities. It was first introduced in 1908 in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay, Ont.). Winnipeg and Brandon changed to DST in 1916, two years after Regina implemented the switch. Its purpose was to save energy for the First World War.

In Canada now, Saskatchewan is the only province that observes standard time alone. Yukon went into permanent daylight saving in 2020, after holding consultations and an online survey. Alberta attempted a referendum in 2021 to also go into permanent DST, but it failed to pass. There are some municipalities in B.C. that don’t make the switch and there are some in Saskatchewan that do. Talk about confusion.

Much of the discussion on changing time seems to concern what our neighbours to the south are doing. British Columbia is considering moving to permanent DST if Oregon, Washington State, and California also change. Ontario is making similar plans, waiting to see what Quebec and New York are planning to do. Meanwhile in the U.S., the “Sunshine Protection Act” was passed by the Senate in 2022 that would make DST permanent, but it has never been made into a federal law. The momentum seems to be growing.

Research suggests that the underlying reasoning for the push for DST in the early 1900s in England and New Zealand had to do largely with the Protestant work ethic: work hard, waste nothing. The authors of the DST bills introduced (but not passed) in British Parliament in 1908 pledged to work against the “waste of daylight.”

People could be more productive in the mornings. They would partake in more seemly recreational activities and stay away from “licensed houses” in the evenings (and by extension lower the number of unwanted pregnancies). The militia could get in target practice with the additional hour of sunlight in the summer as well. And sure, there would be economies in fuel too.

However, research now indicates that efficiencies in electricity and fuel are difficult to quantify, particularly given changing consumer habits and different geographies. If there are any savings to be made, they are minimal.

The effect of the time change on people’s circadian rhythm has been explored in a number of other studies. Research suggests that the end of daylight saving time throws off our internal clocks and it can take as long as two weeks to fully readjust a sleep schedule after the time change. As a result, accidents on the job tend to rise. So do car accidents with fatalities and pedestrian collisions increasing.

There’s more. Heart attacks also go up with more admissions to emergency rooms. There are concerns that mental health and suicidal ideation also are impacted by the change in time. Students tend to suffer in the classrooms during the transition, finding it difficult to concentrate and stay on task. There are some concerns that fertility may be affected as well, particularly for couples already finding it difficult to conceive.

Switching to DST was ostensibly designed to save fuel and electricity while ensuring the working class stayed out of the taverns, pursuing more “wholesome” recreation instead. Now, it seems to carry with it risks that could be ameliorated if we stayed permanently in one time zone.

Policy-makers in Manitoba should start to think about advancing this as an option, particularly if Ontario or the United States starts to head in that direction.

Shannon Sampert is a communications consultant, freelance editor for Policy Options and former politics and perspectives editor at the Free Press. She teaches part time at the University of Manitoba.

shannon@mediadiva.ca