Alberta ponders time for change
With so much to worry about these days — Trump, climate change, free trade, frostbitten refugees trekking to the border, Russia, oil pipelines — it would be a treat to have something simple to chew over.
Well, here in Alberta we have found just the answer. Daylight time: should we or shouldn’t we?
Our NDP government has decided it’s time to decide once and for all whether we want more daylight hours in the morning or late into the evening.
If Albertans opt to forgo daylight time and stick with mountain standard time all year the sun would rise on summer solstice in Fort McMurray at 3:33 a.m. So it would actually start getting light about 2:30 a.m. The southern part of the province could expect dawn about an hour later. Thomas Dang, an Edmonton MLA and the youngest in the province’s history, is the leading light on this question. Perhaps because he is only 21-years-old and doesn’t need as much sleep as people much younger or much older than him, he doesn’t worry about sunlight creeping into the bedroom in the middle of what would have been the night.
On the other hand, if we don’t spring ahead to mountain daylight time as we are supposed to on March 12, it would be easier to get the kids to bed at a decent time rather than having to wait until it gets dark around 11 p.m.
Of course, cattle and other farm animals don’t ever know what time it is. They simply get going when the sun comes up. But according to Dang, farmers say the time change adversely affects feeding schedules and production so they would rather not switch twice a year. This seems counterintuitive since farmers are often blamed for the switch to Daylight time in the first place.
Dang has been holding consultations with various stakeholders for the last six months. But then who isn’t a stakeholder when it comes to this issue; everyone has an interest in when the sun rises and sets. To make sure we can all have a say Dang has posted an online survey. And as it turns out Albertans do indeed have strong opinions about time.
“We have received in the first three days of the survey, more than 17,000 responses already and the vast majority of them support stopping changing our clocks,” Dang told CBC Radio.
The survey closes Tuesday and depending on the response the government is hoping to have a bill drafted on the matter by mid-March.
The government even has support from the opposition.
Richard Starke, a Progressive Conservative MLA and current contender for the party leadership, is keen to get rid of Daylight time. That’s because he is the MLA for the region that straddles the Alberta/Saskatchewan border.
Since Saskatchewan is the only province that keeps to one time standard all year that means residents of Lloydminster — Canada’s only border city — find themselves switching between time zones if in the winter they wake in Alberta but have to travel to work in Saskatchewan.
Definitely too much to handle first thing in the morning.
Starke wants a referendum on the matter, which would certainly keep everyone distracted for quite a while from such contentious issues as carbon taxes and low oil prices.
Besides Saskatchewan there are a handful of regions in Canada that have opted for less confusion when it comes to figuring out what time it is. Northwestern Ontario, the Peace River region in B.C., and some areas of Nunavut don’t switch to DST, keeping their clocks the same all year. Dang says it takes about two weeks for most people to adjust to the time change in March and then November when we have to fall back.
“That’s two weeks of productivity that we are losing. Two weeks of everyone being grumpy at work. Two weeks of teachers have a tougher time in their classrooms . . . we don’t think it is really necessary any more.”
Of course Canada could do what China does: one time zone for the entire country.
Even in Newfoundland.
If Albertans opt to forgo daylight time and stick with mountain standard time all year the sun would rise on summer solstice in Fort McMurray at 3:33 a.m.