Residents of #canada, would you be in favour of your province or territory abolishing annual clock changes and moving to a consistent, year round time?
@canada Residents of #canada, would you be in favour of your province or territory abolishing annual clock changes and moving to a consistent, year round time?
If yes, what would you prefer: year round daylight savings time (an extra hour of sunlight in the evening) or standard time (an extra hour of sunlight in the morning)?
116 replies
I live in Saskatchewan, so I already don't change my clocks at all and I can say with certainty that it is better this way! Please stop changing your clocks!
I found out that Saskatchewan is on permanent Daylight time (more evening sun) which is, by most studies, the 'worse' option. However, it is still better than changing the clocks and once you stop the flip-flop, it is so much better.
Also from Saskatchewan, lived in Alberta for a few years. I have literally never in my life had a moment where I wished Sask did time changes, and found it stressful and annoying every time it happened while living elsewhere.
Stop changing your clocks! Good job BC, I hope you start some dominoes!
SK doesn’t get many things right, but not observing DST is one of them.
Came here to say the same thing.
When the whole time zone and DST were being introduced it is my understanding that it was “because the cows wouldn’t understand why they were being fed an hour early or later depending on the time of the year.”
Here is to the livestock for saving people from the week of more car accidents and heart attacks!
@FlareHeart if it’s the worse option then I wonder why everywhere keeps going for it (BC and the Yukon too). My guess is that it’s partially for economic reasons. Most people are out and about in the evening, so by allowing for an extra hour of sunlight in the evening you open the window of time when people will engage in economic activities. This could have indirect health benefits through increased employment or something, who knows.
I'm not sure. I know that due to our position and lack of sunlight, most Canadians are deficient in vitamin D, so I supplement for that anyway. But I love not having to change my clocks. One hour's shift of what little sunlight we get in the winter doesn't matter IMO. Just stop flip-flopping!
Oh, the horror of changing a clock...
Oh, the horror of poorer mental health, increased car accidents and heart attacks...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/health-examined/202603/how-daylight-saving-time-affects-well-being-and-health
Ooo.psychology today , that's almost science.
Like most psychology studies, they misuse stats to generate a conclusion they already made before the study. Psychology is a joke, epidemiology is a joke, but together the make the Reece's peanut butter of shit science.
What if all those events were just due to weather changes coincident with fall and spring time changes? Did they look at mean temperatures? Air pressure?
Example, from the link you didn't read,
"An analysis in the European Journal of Public Health from 2024 showed no increase in suicide in Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden following the start of daylight saving time. However, data vary, and studies show that some subgroups, including patients with substance use disorders, may incur a 6.59 percent increase in suicide risk soon after the springtime change."
A subgroup of a subgroup may have (that means not significant) an effect. Typical of garbage published around this.
I suggest you people find solutions to real problems in the world.
Heavy use of sarcasm, unironic use of "you people" when replying to a single person, and turning it all into whataboutism.
Bad faith arguments.
Not worth my time.
I'm in BC and I'm glad we're not doing the changes again. That said, I do wish we stuck with standard time instead, but I'll get used to it.
@TheFeatureCreature What do you prefer about standard time?
I prefer earlier darkness in the evening.
@TheFeatureCreature that’s fair enough
The fact that clock noon is actually within a half hour of solar noon, and not a whole hour and a bit off.
Kelowna varies from being less than 2 minutes off of solar noon to about 11 minutes off at the most. Now it’s going to be permanently an entire hour-plus off.
Why call it noon if it isn’t actually noon?
Yes. In Alberta, especially in the central/northern region, the time change doesn't serve any particular purpose. Our daylight hours are very long in the summer and very short in the winter, so changing the specific time the sun rises and sets hardly makes a difference.
Personally I prefer standard time over DST, and I think a lot of people here share that opinion. We probably would have switched over years ago if our government had any shred of competence.
There is a week every year (maybe 2 don’t remember the study too well) that there is an increase of car accidents and heart attacks when the clocks fall back (or spring forward again don’t remember the study too well). I am glad I live in Saskatchewan where our livestock wouldn’t understand why they are being fed at different times!
As I understand it, when the time zones and time changing was being developed Saskatchewan said no time change “because the cows wouldn’t understand why they were being fed at different times.” So all I can say is here to the livestock!
But seriously different parts of the world and parts of Canada can do without time changes, I understand why Canada likes time zones but time changes are silly. We should really all just follow Europe, I think they all follow one time zone, and all get into GMT and adjust our lives to that. If all the world was one time zone could you imagine how much easier it would be to schedule meetings and the such. Yes I understand I it would be confusing why 9 to 5 would be different, 15:00 to 23:00 (in Saskatchewan). As I understand it China has one time zone as well, of course there are plenty of small counties that only fall into one time zone.
@Reannlegge yeah I’ve heard about how there is an increase in heart attacks and car accidents after you set the clocks forward an hour. But apparently there is actually a decrease in heart attacks and car accidents when you set the clocks forward an hour, so it cancels out in the end. Not that that’s a good reason to stick with the time change though! At the very least we’ve got to make sure we don’t confuse the cows
@chimpchomp @canada I fully support year round DST.
Yes. Please keep it at standard time. Keep noon at noon.
In BC we are now on permanent daylight savings. Gives us a winter dark around 4:30 instead of 3:30
Also in BC. We should have gone with permanent Standard time imo.
Same here. Wish they put it to referendum, no idea why they went with daylight savings.
Why would you want sunrise at 330 in the summer?
Why not? Wake up naturally with no alarm clock at like 6am ready to take on the day and feeling refreshed. Sunlight pouring through the windows as you drink your coffee and get showered.
I would rather have a ton of sunlight in the morning then late in the evening.
We get that already with 4:30am sun starting, no need for 3:30am
You can do the same with 430am sunlight though.
Why? You want 3;:30 sunrise starting? I prefer the 4:30am start, and daylight in the winter near end of day
Most people won't even notice if they leave work at 5pm, will still be dark no matter what so why not have an extra hour of light in the morning instead? I much prefer standard.
In winter it is dark here in the morning too. Rainforest oveecaat cloud cover means its pretty bleak
Instead of changing how the sun works maybe change how humans work. Instead of 9 to 5, how about 8 to 4 ?
I'm all for that.
You chose to be consistantly wrong ?
You probably don't live near Vancouver. Otherwise you'd know Daylight time makea more sense
I support ending seasonal time changes. There is considerable data showing that these changes cause health issues and more workplace injuries. However, staying on daylight saving time isn't the right choice. Every jurisdiction that has tried this has been compelled to revert to seasonal adjustments. The best option is Standard Time, as it aligns most closely with solar time, which our bodies naturally follow.
Other than the poorly implemented experiment in the States, who else has reverted? Saskatchewan is (effectively) permanent daylight time, as are Argentina, Malaysia, and Singapore. Possibly there's a bunch of other countries that I don't know about as well.
The short list of clear “tried it → reversed it” cases is:
And the reason is remarkably consistent:
👉 Permanent DST sounds appealing—but winter mornings break it.
Thanks ChatGPT.
Why is there no discussion on splitting the difference and changing time zones by half an hour? If Newfoundland can survive being half an hour off from its neighbors there shouldn't be any arguments against it.
@loonmusic this is a good idea. Especially since I can see both sides of the argument here. Standard time is apparently better for our health but having an extra hour in the evening with daylight time could be good for the economy extend the window of time when people go out and do things. It may even prevent crime in the same way that proper street lighting prevents crime. So splitting the difference Newfoundland style seems like a good compromise.
There is no conclusive evidence that street lighting prevents crime. Some study even found an inverse correlation.
@alsimoneau That’s interesting. Intuitively it makes a lot of sense that it would prevent crime, so I never questioned the idea.
Light increses the feeling of safety, but light also creates shadows, where one can hides while seeing their target.
Why not 15 minute time zones? You could leave for work and arrive at work at the same time.
Alberta here. Fuck yes! The premise of DST is stupid. Changing twice a year is more stupider.
Abolish it forever and move to standard time.
Also Alberta, also yes.
Danielle Smith would be less able to break things while working on it, too.
I don't care which. Pick one and stop changing the clocks.
Oooo..it's so complex!! There's little buttons and the clock only adjust in one direction...oooo...this is our Iranian War!
In BC, we've switched to permanent PDT. But why are we still calling it pacific time? It's obviously Mountain Time.
It’s always “Pacific”, regardless if it is ST or DST.
The real fuckery is that the referendum gave us only two choices, not three:
There was no option for permanent Standard Time, so everyone chose the least-worst option instead of the much better one that wasn’t even provided.
For west coast permanent daylight is better. We have darkness around 3:30 pm in winter, so now it will be 4:30 which is much better driving hone from work with some daylight. And with daylight time in summer its getting light out around 4:30-4:45am, if we went back to standard time that would be 3:30-3:45am. I don't enjoy sunshine that early
No I prefer gmt-7 to gmt-8. I just think year-round gmt-7 should be called "mountain time."
I say we change the time every day such that sunrise is 6am in Toronto. Fuck your/my microwave clock. Permanent standard time would have some post 8am sunrises.
Fully support ditching the switch.
Absolutely. But they need to do it right. Eby's "permanent" change to Daylight Savings Time will most likely get rescinded in a year or two just like it has everywhere else it has been tried because it doesn't work. That hour on winter mornings is needed far, far more than the hour in the evening in the summer. He would have been much better to have not changed the time on March 8th and just left it alone.
Stop changing the clocks. I don't care which permanent time we pick, just make it permanent.
Abolish and use standard time. BTW, standard time doesn't give an extra hour of sunlight in the morning, it's equal. DST gives an extra sunlight hour in the evening.
Get rid of time change. Have a referemdum for Standard or Daylight, then stick to it.
I absolutely want to get rid of changing clocks every year, which is nice because BC is doing just that
Unfortunately I think BC is going permanent Daylight savings, where I would prefer permanent Standard. It's much nicer to wake up to daylight in the morning, and I don't particularly care for doing outdoor activities at 10-11pm.
For sure. But everyone should change. Otherwise, it's a constant question of who's on what time.
That happens already anyway, especially if you work with people across timezones, so this seems like a non issue TBH
Yes, if all of them stopped changing. If some changed and some didn't, you'll have to be thinking which ones changed and which ones didn't.
I guess I just always find myself checking/verifying what time it is on the east or west coast regardless. Same when I am scheduling a meeting or call with someone overseas just to make sure it's within their working hours.
I work across timezones — and the fact that I’ll no longer be changing my clocks in the fall (living in BC), but my employees in EDT will be changing back to EST will be a problem.
With the un-until-now changing of the clocks twice a year, I’ve always been 3 hours behind my Eastern Time employees. This was easy to keep track of, and meant that our 1100 team meetings were at 1400 for them year round. Clocks changed here, clocks changed there, everything stayed in sync.
But now that we won’t be changing the clock here in BC in the fall, that 1100 meeting I book in PT is going to suddenly become a 1300 meeting for them. That wouldn’t be a problem if this was everyone’s only meeting, but as we’re part of a big multinational corporation they have other scheduled meetings with various teams already scheduled for 1300, so they’re going to be in conflict. I can fix them by bumping the meeting back an hour after the fall time change — but that means my BC based employees are going to have to attend a meeting over lunch (something I am very loathe to do — I know there are a lot of shitty managers out there, but for my staff I work very hard to ensure they get all the time off they are owed, they get time off when they want/need it, that everyone gets time off and flexibility for medical issues, and that I don’t ask them to work after hours or during lunch breaks unless agreed upon beforehand, and even then only for emergency situations).
In essence, if I keep that meeting at the same time in PT it’s going to change in ET, and that change is going to cascade as other meetings suddenly overlap. Or I change it here, and have a similar issue for my staff in BC. And that’s not even saying anything about my one team member in California (where they’re still changing time twice a year). Now — this isn’t the worst thing in the world to happen; we’ll work our way around it — but if everyone stopped doing twice-yearly time changes it would certainly make the situation easier. Twice a year I’m going to have a scheduling PITA.
Still worth it to no longer have to change all the clocks twice a year!
Add some complications by adding clients in Europe.
They also do standard/summer time, but they change at a different time of the year than North Americans!
My recently ruined sleep schedule thinks this sounds good. Personally I'd go for standard time cause waking up to darkness is really depressing for me.
Yes, as long as they go back to the standard for time zones.
My region has not.
No. The time changes show us how time is a construct and how we as a society can make collective decisions that alter our reality.
All of the alternatives to our current system have their own problems, there is no perfect solution. Design is about finding a compromise that works the least ungood and I think the time change is that.
Yeah, could we collectively decide to stop fucking with the construction of time?
GST is a societal construct. Should it be 4.5% during the summer and 5.5% during the winter to show us we can make collective decisions?
How do you feel about leap years? They drive me nuts. We should add the 1/4 day throughout the year to do away with the burden of having an extra day of February. Leap year is a social construct that only benefits Big Mitten by having a longer winter.
But the leap year doesn't make the coldness of winter any longer, it just makes sure our seasons don't drift out of alignment with our expectation of the name of the months.
A leap year actually is a great example of how our construct of time is met with an indifferent natural law and how we need to adapt for consistency
Yes. Dump DST, its well overdue.
Jesus, people are fucking obsessed with this.
Every 6 months we go through this bullshit.
Let's pick one day a year for Easter while we're at it.
Fun fact: While Roman Catholic church erased Jesus from Christianity in year 390, and 900, they decided to change Easter schedule to be different than Passover in order to not be strictly about old testament divine rights of kings for war.
Fun fact, if you pay really close attention to a Catholic mass, there are one or two really subtle references to Jesus that haven't yet been erased.
I won't mention them here, because they may find out and make corrections.
When the Church made God and Jesus of co-equal same matter, they let the empire just listen to their inner voice on what (God given) land they deserve instead of the "do onto others..." philosophy. Similarly, under Charlemagne, the holy spirit became what the empire tells you instead of any inner devotion/love/conscience guided by Jesus's humanist philosophy. Pretending that Jesus fully approved, instead of reformed, the old testament is the erasure of Jesus in Christianity, even if our Yawehist warmongering sect is sold with more love than zionism.
Really, I don't care, and I don't see why we have holidays for one fictional character from a fictional book for one religion, in what is supposed to be a multicultural society.
I'd rather Ontario extend Atlantic time to Sudbury.
@ILikeBoobies is Ontario not a single timezone?
It is but the sun comes up and goes down too early all year in the eastern side of it.
@ILikeBoobies ah okay i see what you’re saying
Quebec here, I am still a bit hesitant and nuanced about this, the reason being that our winters are quite dark and really rough on our bodies, and I wonder how whatever amount of sunlight we receive would be impacted, and to our circadian rhythms.
Personally I prefer one hour sunlight in the evening, but that’s me, and I am not getting up early (7-8am).
I would rely on actual scientists versed in the matter here.
If you care about the sunlight then you don’t care what the clock says, you wake up with the sun.
Scientists are pretty consistent that changing the clocks is an idiotic idea, but Canadians (like many others) are just stubborn and resist change, and seek out excuses to continue resisting change.
I live in Asia now where they do not change clocks and it is so much better this way.
Wake up earlier, or petition business or whatever it is to wake up an hour earlier/later. The time change isnt doing anything technically. It does mess with a lot of logistics and software however, so is a blight on businesses and record keeping.
Ontario already has legislation for this, but it's tied to I think New York and Quebec doing the same
Quebec hasn't passed legislation, but they've agreed in theory to do it if Ontario and New York also do it.
So we're pretty much just waiting on New York.
@prodigalsorcerer @tooclose104 that’s what BC was saying for a while. That they had to wait for the states in the Western US to do it. But eventually BC just pulled the trigger and did it without them
Yeah, I don't have much hope of it happening in Ontario with our current government. It seems too difficult to use in a way that enriches him or his buddies. Best we can hope for is it happening right before the next election in hopes that we ignore all the corruption and just think "hey,
buck a beer!$200 cheques!no more time change!"@prodigalsorcerer yeah speaking of corruption in ontario, duggies new legislation on FOI requests is actually wild. I hope that somehow manages to not make it thru
I'm from Saskatchewan. Literally nothing would change for me.
I want global coordination on either 0 or whatever time changes done simultaneously.
@humanspiral this is what China does. It should be like 4 or 5 timezones or smthg but they only use one: their Eastern-most timezone. From what I understand though the locals in the Western provinces don’t really use the official time in their day to day. They still stick to the old, unofficial timezones. I think that shows that even if we did have one coordinated global timezone people wouldn’t necessarily use it
I am a little excited to not have to change our clocks back come November. I know experts say we should have stayed on Standard time and I probably would have preferred that, but I don't think it's going to make more of a difference than the torture of changing our clocks and fucking up our sleep twice a year. We can work around excess daylight, we can't work around screwing up the timing of our body processes. It would be foolish of the other provinces to not follow suit.
As long as its standard time.
Im in favor of not having fascism anywhere in the world. Who cares about time change when there is an active conspiracy to instill fascism in all governments worldwide.
yes, we should just be on winter time year round
If you’re interested, I can provide a research bibliography.
@RandomCanuck i would be very interested in that, thank you!
Here you go!
Bibtex format: @Article{Lahti2019, author = {T. A. Lahti and J. L"{o}nnqvist and T. Partonen}, title = {Seasonal clock changes are underappreciated health risks—also in cardiovascular disease}, journal = {Frontiers in Neurology}, year = {2019}, volume = {10}, pages = {459} }
@Article{Jiddou2013, author = {M. R. Jiddou and B. A. Levy and T. L. A. Newman and F. A. Masoudi and S. F. Duval}, title = {Daylight saving time and acute myocardial infarction}, journal = {American Journal of Cardiology}, year = {2013}, volume = {112}, number = {11}, pages = {1592--1595} }
@Article{Lahti2016, author = {T. A. Lahti and J. L"{o}nnqvist and H. Partonen and T. Partonen}, title = {Daylight saving time transitions and hospital treatments due to accidents or non-arranged care}, journal = {Chronobiology International}, year = {2016}, volume = {33}, number = {5}, pages = {517--523} }
@Article{Coren1996, author = {S. Coren}, title = {Daylight saving time and traffic accidents}, journal = {New England Journal of Medicine}, year = {1996}, volume = {334}, number = {1}, pages = {67} }
@Article{Akerstedt2002, author = {T. \AA kerstedt and A. Wright and J. Kronholm and T. Partonen}, title = {Daylight saving time and myocardial infarction incidence}, journal = {Chronobiology International}, year = {2002}, volume = {19}, number = {4}, pages = {697--707} }
@Article{OpenHeart2014, author = {C. M. Manzar and A. Ahmed and M. A. Sohail and M. A. Khan and M. A. Khan and others}, title = {Daylight savings time and myocardial infarction}, journal = {Open Heart}, year = {2014}, volume = {1}, number = {1}, pages = {e000019} }
@Article{Ellman2026, author = {B. Ellman and others}, title = {Time changes still frustrate Americans, and the fall shift appears to linger longer}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, year = {2026}, volume = {11}, number = {3}, pages = {e0247789} }
@Report{CRS2025, author = {{U.S. Congressional Research Service}}, title = {Daylight saving time: Historical background and current law}, institution = {Congressional Research Service}, year = {2025}, number = {R42572} }
@Hearing{SenateHearing2025, author = {{U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions}}, title = {If I Could Turn Back Time: Should We Lock the Clock?}, year = {2025}, note = {Senate Hearing Document 114-312} }
@Article{SleepHealth2019, author = {E. B. Klerman and D. B. Fischer and M. J. S. Harrington and others}, title = {Daylight saving time may be linked to long-term health effects}, journal = {Sleep Health}, year = {2019}, volume = {5}, number = {4}, pages = {351--357} }
@RandomCanuck thanks!
I am in favour. Don't care which one we adopt I just disagree with changing clocks all the time.
No. Not at all. The country is too large for that. Does no-one care about the effect of planetary movements anymore? An hour here or there does not effect circadian rhythms. Night-shifts do.
That sounds like an argument the other way to me. I work rotating shift work, permanent DST is going to be awesome for me. I'm going to love having at least 1 hour of sun after my commute home after a winter morning, as well as not doing almost my entire night shift in darkness. I'm also thankful we won't have standard time in the summer. I'm ok waking up in darkness, I already would for a morning shift 365 days a year. Right now I can easily make it to bed in darkness, but standard time it would be getting noticeably lighter by the time I get home.
Apparently I'm the only person in the country who doesn't find the seasonal time changing to be problematic.
I like having the extra sunshine hours in the summer evenings, and having sunrise come a bit sooner in the winter. And I've never personally experienced any dramatically negative effects on the days when the time changes.
You are lucky then. I have trouble sleeping even on good days. Losing 1 hour of sleep that I already have trouble getting is majorly problematic for me.
I am sure the people with the increased amount of car accidents and heart attacks care.
Motorists are more likely to die in collisions, but cyclists and pedestrians are not; and by a nearly equal amount. So maybe take active or public transit for a week or two following the time change. It will help with reducing heart attacks too.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/changing-the-clocks-helps-pedestrians-but-hurts-motorists
I live in Saskatchewan so I don’t worry about this time change BS.
Same. I usually don’t notice until I get in the car and the clock is an hour off.
What I want goes the opposite way, but it'd require some serious infrastructure-updates, 1st:
I want days to begin either at solar-dusk or at solar-midnight,
& night & day each to be divided into 12 "hours",
& people to begin anchoring to the natural cycles of night & day, instead of pretending that living-in-boxes divorced-from-nature is somehow our best choice!
It'd take some getting-used-to, but with microcontroller-clocks, for doing the calculations, it's work beautifully.
Midday becomes locked to the sun.
Midnight becomes locked to the sun being at nadir.
Dawn means something, so does dusk.
Etc.
Mechanismists would hate it, of course, but all the creatures of Nature, whom we've been holocausting, would probably benefit.
( this also requires accepting the biological fact in "WHEN: The Science of Perfect Timing", by Pink,
that there are early-morning people, there are late-morning people, there are owls ( which covers nearly everybody else ), & what that-book missed, is that there also are chaos-"cycle" people, whose biology isn't regular.
Having the late-morning people & the owls NOT have to be at work early, would reduce the deaths-on-the-roads.
& having each day's cycle be mere-minutes different from the last, instead of the arbitrary 1h-jump in spring/fall, would remove the sudden-jump-in-deaths on the roads, then, too, obviously )
_ /\ _
Where in a time zone do you lock the solar noon/nadir too? That's a (usually) 30 to 60 minute variation depending on the size of the zone.
The entire reason standardixed time began to exists, was the extreme difficulty in time deferences between cities that could now be travelled between in short order by train (specifically Ozford and London, which were 5 minutes apart).
Any longitudinal travel would quickly change your time! Talk about scheduling nightmares. Late for a meeting in Toronto because you called from Ottawa. A 10 minute train ride is 9 minutes in one direction and 11 the other!
Hate the time changes as much as anybody else, get rid of them, but only if we get Standard Time from it and do away with DST entirely.
When we had the vote in Alberta to change to permanent Daylight Savings Time, I voted against the idea. I understand that it's better than changing the clocks at all, but it makes no sense to me whatsoever to basically change our timezone and stick with Daylight Savings permanently when we should be getting rid of it entirely.
I'd rather keep the flip-flop so that the option to do away with DST entirely remains on the table in the future. In my mind, it's a lot more likely that another vote appears to get rid of the flip-flop with going to Standard Time as an option than it is for us to get rid of the flip-flop and have a vote getting rid of permanent DST in favour of Standard Time.
Thank you for saving me the effort of typing that out. I also voted against the referendum despite wanting to get rid of time changest
With several NA jurisdictions now on permanent DST, or having already passed legislation to use permanent DST pending some condition or other, I'd say the chance of AB switching to permanent standard time is vanishingly small. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The failure of that referendum gives a ton of ammo to those in favour of the status quo.