EDMONTON – Albertans voted narrowly against changing to permanent daylight saving time this week, even as other provinces have decided that it is the right time to stop changing clocks twice a year.
The results in Alberta were very close to each other: “yes” to permanent daylight saving time received 49.8% support, while “no” received 50.2%, according to Elections Alberta, which published the figures from the last referendum of the week on Tuesday.
That means that each year Albertans will continue to turn their clocks forward one hour in the spring and backward one hour in the fall (this is known as the forward and reverse spring pattern). The government of Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenney has indicated that it will respect the wishes of the voters.
However, they will be out of line with neighboring BC and Saskatchewan. Ontario is also about to switch to permanent daylight saving time.
When it comes to sleep experts, Albertans chose this one, while other provinces may see an increase in health consequences and accidents in their new world of permanent daylight saving time.
Those same experts argue that most people would be better off living on standard time rather than daylight saving time, the hours used for summer.
Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a biologist at the University of York, says the only reason it’s appealing to some is that “people have more light in the afternoon” to enjoy activities.
Lakin-Thomas said that everyone from golfers who wanted more time on the golf course to officials who wanted to save energy during World War II liked the idea of daylight saving time, but that it “never came to any benefit.” . It also didn’t end up conserving energy, he added.
“It is absolutely wrong to do in the winter when people forget that if it rises later in the afternoon, it also rises later in the morning,” he said.
She said to imagine the practical implications of going to work and school.
“Staying in the summer, daylight saving time, year-round means the sun won’t rise in a place like Toronto until 9 am,” Lakin-Thomas said.
“In some parts of Alberta, the sun won’t rise until 10 am (permanent daylight saving time).”
Michael Antle, a professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, says that standard time matches people’s circadian rhythm better than daylight saving time.
“Our biological clock has to track the sun, and that’s the only thing it can do,” he said. “When your social clock deviates from what the sun is doing, that leads to what they call social jet lag.
“That’s when illnesses can increase, workplace accidents can increase, and people just don’t function optimally,” he added.
Research has found that people can experience higher rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes if the circadian rhythm is out of line, Antle said.
“People who have late sunsets sleep less,” he said.
But what worries Antle most are collisions. In the winter, people will get up before their circadian clock is ready, he said.
“That’s going to have sleepy workers, sleepy students and sleepy drivers,” he said.
Ontario is currently waiting to proclaim a bill that it passed in 2020 that would also make it go exactly to permanent daylight saving time.
In a statement to the Star, Attorney General’s Ministry spokeswoman Kerstie Schreyer said Ontario would proclaim the bill, Bill 214, Time Amendment Act, 2020, once neighboring jurisdictions such as Quebec and New York also make the switch.
This would be done to “ensure coordination in areas such as commerce, securities markets and broadcasting,” Schreyer said.
Like Alberta, British Columbia also posed the question of daylight saving time to its citizens, albeit in a survey.
An overwhelming majority of respondents said “yes” in 2019, and 93 percent supported the change to permanent daylight saving time. The government of Prime Minister John Horgan passed legislation that would align the province with neighboring US states.
In the US, some of those states, like Washington and Oregon, also signaled a desire to change, but schedule changes like that must be approved by the federal government.
BC’s change to permanent daylight saving time has been brought forward due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Saskatchewan already effectively observes daylight saving time and doesn’t change its clocks, making things uncomfortable for residents of Lloydminster, a city that straddles the Albertan border with Saskatchewan.
The city of roughly 30,000 residents is out of step with Saskatchewan for much of the year when it changes its clocks in line with Alberta’s.
Reference-www.thestar.com