After years of debate, the Alberta government’s decision to table legislation to get rid of the twice-a-year time change and permanently adopt daylight time is being welcomed by many Albertans.
“I think it just is a bit easier, you know, changing the clocks. I feel like also that first day where you’re kind of thrown off from the time change, it’d be nice to get rid of that,” said Calgarian Camisha Rahmatian as she made her way to work during the Tuesday morning rush hour.
“Honestly, the time change has always been really hard for me. I struggle with seasonal depression. So it’s like the long hours, it’s just it’s not a good time. I really don’t enjoy the time change. I don’t think it gives us any more daylight and I think it just screws up everybody’s schedule,” added Calgarian Abbey Rodgers.
On Monday, the Alberta government confirmed it will be tabling an omnibus bill in the legislature later this week to get rid of the controversial time changes.
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The decision is being made despite Albertans voting to keep the time changes in a provincial plebiscite five years ago, by a very narrow margin — 50.2 per cent to 49.8 per cent.
However, the government of British Columbia’s decision to get rid of the time changes this spring, along with Saskatchewan staying on central standard time year-round, prompted Alberta to reconsider the idea.
“We’re squished in between two provinces who no longer change their clocks,” said Service Alberta Minister Dale McNally. “So the facts on the ground have changed, and so we have to make a decision accordingly.”
University of Calgary professor Michael Antle, who has been studying the body’s circadian rhythm for 30 years, says the decision to get rid of the twice-yearly time change will affect every part of your life.
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Michael Antle, head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary, has been studying the circadian rhythm — the human body’s 24-hour internal clock and how it reacts to changes in sleep, light and other changes in the environment — for 30 years.
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“There is acute harm in the spring when we change our clocks,” he says. “We all now have to get up an hour earlier and your body doesn’t want to do that. Your circadian clock has been following the sun and now you’re getting up before sunrise for a few weeks and that’s hard.”
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“We know that there’s increased rates of car accidents, on-the-job accidents, but generally people feel tired and grumpy and they don’t like that time change,” added Antle.
He says getting rid of the time change will mean both sunset and dawn will happen later in the day.
While he says that won’t be a problem in the summer, it will make a difference during the winter.
“Because we live so far north, we have these really short winter days and the sun rises late and it sets early in the winters. So the more natural standard time is what people have really stuck with throughout history because we need that morning light. The body does not like getting up before dawn on those short days, and unfortunately, moving to daylight time year-round is going to push our dawn an hour later,” said Antle.
University of Calgary researcher, Michael Antle, says getting rid of the time changes means the sun won’t rise in December until about 9:30 a.m. in Calgary and 10:30 a.m. in Edmonton and even later in more northern parts of the province.
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“So in places like Calgary, the sun won’t rise until 9:30 in December, and in other places in the northern or western part of the province (like) Edmonton and Grand Prairie, it’ll be closer to 10 or 10:30 in the morning in December before they see the sun.”
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Antle says it means many people living in the northern parts of Alberta will be going to work in the dark for about five months a year.
“It’s going to be really hard. A few places have tried it. Russia tried this in 2012, and they have about the same latitude as Canada. What they found in Russia in 2012, when they went to permanent daylight time, was an increased rate of mental illness, particularly amongst the youth. So rates of depression, seasonal depression went up. After two years of that experiment, they switched to standard time year-round and they’ve been on standard time now for the last 12 years. And those rates came back down, so the mental health improved in the population,” said Antle.
He says it will be important for the province to monitor the impacts of the change for the next few years, and have “some kind of exit strategy.”
In a similar experiment in the United States in the early 1970s, Antle says the country “bailed halfway through the experiment.” In another three-year experiment in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, they eventually went back to changing their clocks twice a year.
Professor Michael Antle says the morning sun is critical to help reset the human body’s circadian rhythm on a daily basis.
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Antle says the human circadian clock needs to be reset on a daily basis and sunlight is the cue that does that, which is why morning sunlight is so critical for most people.
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“One of the things I’m going to have a talk with here at the university is class times. The 8 a.m. courses are really hard for our students, and the 9 a.m. courses are going to be the new 8 a.m., and those 8 a.m. courses are going to feel like 7 a.m.”
“We don’t want our students finishing the first class before the sun comes up, so we may have to talk to the administration here about adjusting our timetable, our exam schedules,” Antle added.
However, a spokesperson for the government of Ontario said Tuesday that residents of the province will continue to spring forward and fall back.
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