As we approach the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST), millions of Canadians will set their clocks back one hour this weekend, while millions of others will not.
The Maritime provinces as well as Quebec and most parts of Ontario and Nunavut, will adhere to the time old tradition of turning their clocks back, while B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Yukon and the Northwest Territories will remain on permanent DST. Saskatchewan does not observe DST and remains on standard time year round.
Researchers have pushed for an end to time changes for years, citing concerns over sleep patterns, mental health, physical health and productivity. But now many are saying remaining on DST permanently may be the wrong choice.
“When you want to change to permanent time, it should be permanent standard time,” Kai-Florian Storch, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, told Global News.
Transitioning to DST in the spring shifts daylight further into the evening making the day seem longer. But keeping that time into the winter months pushes sunrise later, especially in more northern latitudes.
“You don’t want to wake up too far away from sunrise, so you don’t want to wake up in the dark if possible. You want to wake up as close as possible to sunrise,” Storch said.
But on permanent DST, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg will see the sun rise between 9 and 9:30 a.m. in the winter. In Edmonton, sunrise on the winter solstice will occur just before 10 a.m. In the territories the sun will rise after 11 a.m.
When the sun rises in the morning it resets our biological clock, Rebecca Robillard, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa and co-chair of the Canadian Sleep Research Consortium, told Global News.
Having the sun rise later in the morning can cause mental and physical health issues, she said.
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“Whether we talk about heart rate, metabolism, how we process sugar, insulin, all of our hormones are regulated by this biological clock,” she added.
These changes can result in an increase in heart attacks, complications related to immune disorders, digestive problems, kidney problems, pregnancy complications, anxiety, depression, substance use and suicide, she said.
“At the end of the day, I think this is not just a question of preference. This is really a question of public health that we should consider the well-being of all Canadians,” she said.
Some Canadian cities began changing their clocks in the early 1910s with the rest of the country standardizing the practice in the late 1960s. The original argument for the change was to increase productivity and facilitate economic interactions with the U.S. and other countries.
Now as western Canada moves away from the practice, those provinces will be out of sync with their southern neighbours.
“It’s better to all make the same choice,” Patrick Baylis, a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, told Global News.
Aside from business interactions, Baylis said individual productivity could take a hit on permanent DST.
“You see this first and foremost in student performance, which matters for its own sake, but is also kind of an indicator for what might be happening in the economy,” he said, emphasizing that a lack of sleep can lead to poor performance.
He said shift workers and those with less flexible schedules will feel the hit the most.
“If you’re required to be at work at 8 a.m., this matters a lot because you’re now going from a few weeks where the sunrise was going to be after the time when you’re supposed to be at work, to a few months,” he said.
“The rule of thumb is the less flexible your work hours are and the closer that start is to when sunrise would have been, the more effective you’re gonna be.”
Baylis said the short term effects might be hard to track, but he expects the long term data to be telling.
Quebec Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced earlier this week on social media that his government would put an end to the time changes and will work to determine whether permanent DST or standard time will be the norm.
The province of Ontario previously said that it would get rid of the practice if its neighbours in Manitoba, Quebec and New York did the same.
Storch said he doesn’t think the change will last long.
“This waking up too early will make people upset and will maybe, in my prediction, convince people to again do away with it and switch back to permanent standard time.”
– With files from Global News’ Heather Yourex-West, Aaron McArthur and Tim Sargeant
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