As we wearily prepare to change the clocks…
British Columbia has decided that, after the impending clock change to daylight saving, it will not change its clock again. It’s misleading for CTV to ask in the headline whether Quebec will follow B.C. into abolishing the clock change because the article itself explains how many ways Quebec has said it’s not about to consider doing it.
DeWolf 12:45 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
Relevant to our previous discussions here: BC has decided to permanently keep daylight savings time instead of standard time.
I know sleep scientists claim keeping standard time is better than daylight savings, but I still don’t understand their argument, given that time zones are artificial and there’s significant variation within them anyway. Their arguments seem predicated on the assumption that most people go to bed very early and wake up very early, so early sunrises are better than late sunsets. But that’s an assumption that ignores cultural and social realities.
The important thing is keeping constant time, not forcing everyone to deal with 4am sunrises in the summer.
Incidentally, this change means that in Vancouver, the earliest the sun will now set is 5:15pm in December, rather than 4:15pm. The flip side is that the sun will not rise until 8:45am.
Also, in the winter there will be only two hours of time difference between here and BC.
R T 12:56 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
“Their arguments seem predicated on the assumption that most people go to bed very early and wake up very early, so early sunrises are better than late sunsets.”
My understanding is that their argument is based less on what most people do but rather on what most people should do.
(For what it’s worth, I feel this tension in my own life: I’m someone who struggles to get up early, so more sun early in the morning seems like it would be wasted on me, but it’s probably simultaneously true that earlier sunrises and earlier sunsets would encourage better sleep habits on the margin.)
DeWolf 14:04 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
I think it’s pretty much universally agreed that the vast majority of people need 7–9 hours of sleep per day. Beyond that, there are a lot of cultural biases around sleep that people (including scientists) don’t realize they have.
In the pre-industrial era, it was normal for sleep to be broken up into segments, with people doing all sorts of things before going back to bed. That didn’t jive with shift work so instead we got the idea that sleep should be unbroken. Similarly, napping is discouraged in North American culture, but it’s very common for people to take a siesta not only in Spain but also in China and many other countries.
Just think of how different cultures approach children’s sleep. Mainstream North American culture insists that kids should go to bed very, very early. And yet in Asia and the Middle East, kids stay up just as late as adults. It’s perfectly normal to see kids up at 11pm or midnight.
All of this to say that North American sleep scientists seem to have a very prescriptivist approach to recommending how people sleep, one that ignores the variety of sleep patterns around the world.
In Finland, the sun rises at 10:30am in the winter. By most measures, Finland is an extremely healthy and happy society. So if they can do it, why would it be so terrible if we adopt permanent EDT and the sun rises at 8:15am instead of 7:15am?
Blork 15:39 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
Basically, BC has decided to adopt Mountain Standard Time (MST: UTC-7) on a permanent basis. Some people might prefer to call it Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), but really it’s just MST, so call it that. People in Regina, SK will be on the same timezone as people in Victoria BC, which is weird.
It will be interesting to see if they insist on officially calling it permanent PDT, which in my opinion would be silly.
Same applies here. If we were to adopt permanent DST it would basically just be switching to Atlantic Standard Time year-round.
R T 15:56 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but while Finland is famous for its national concerted effort to cut its suicide rate in half, this has brought it from the highest in the world to still above the European average. Finland, like other Nordic countries, also has among the highest antidepressant use (though not as high as the large anglophone countries) There’s an established relationship between suicide and latitude, and it’s when the days start to get longer, not shorter, that is associated with seasonal variation at outer latitudes. (This isn’t to say that an earlier or later sunrise would affect this, just that Finland isn’t all shiny happy people.)
Also, my understanding is that sleep scientists are generally pro-short naps and strongly in favour of secondary schools starting later and primary schools starting earlier, all of which pushes against the North American status quo.
Kevin 16:30 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
Every time I hear parents whining about their kids getting up at 4 or 5 a.m., I ask them what did they expect when they put their kids to bed at 7?
But I agree that the expectation of a stupid early bedtime is one of the reasons people delay having kids, or have fewer than they plan for.
DeWolf 17:15 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
@RT — I’m not sure you can draw a correlation between daylight hours and suicide, let alone establish causation. There are 31 countries with a higher suicide rate than Finland, including Guyana, South Africa, France, Thailand, the US and Sri Lanka.
MarcG 18:37 on 2026-03-03 Permalink
It will be interesting to see what opinion polls and traffic accident statistics say after next winter.
MarcG 18:37 on 2026-03-10 Permalink
DeWolf: Very late response but hey. Regarding your statement that advocacy for permanent standard time only comes from North American scientists, here is some from the British, Finnish, and Dutch. Related tidbits: Iran went to permanent standard time in 2022 and Turkey switched to permanent DST in 2016.