Should P.E.I. ditch twice-yearly time changes?

There's a very real possibility Prince Edward Island and many other provinces could soon ditch the idea of the twice-yearly time change that sets most of North America on daylight time for the summer, "springing" forward by an hour in March, then "falling" back an hour on the first Sunday in November. 

The conversation started in B.C., which passed legislation three years ago to allow the province to permanently stay on daylight time after a government survey found 93 per cent of British Columbians wanted to stop changing clocks twice a year and make daylight time permanent.

B.C. premier John Horgan was waiting until three U.S. states in the same time zone — Washington, Oregon and California — also did so, and now it looks like that may happen: earlier this month the U.S. Senate passed legislation called the Sunshine Protection Act that would stop the changing of clocks starting in November 2023.

The legislation still has to pass and receive President Joe Biden's signature, but if it becomes law there would be pressure on other Canadian jurisdictions to follow suit. Cities like Toronto and Ottawa might be keen to have their clocks co-ordinated with those in New York and Washington for the same reasons B.C. wants to be in line with Washington and California.

At a meeting last week, the premiers of the Atlantic provinces noted the recent U.S. vote, and said they planned to work with other premiers and the federal government to explore options for consistency should the bill become law.

What would a permanent change to either standard time or daylight time look like on P.E.I.? 

CBC P.E.I. meteorologist Jay Scotland researched both. He said permanent standard time would mean no change for P.E.I.'s shortest days in winter, but would make for a very early sunrise in summer — the earliest being 4:20 a.m. — and the latest sunset would be an hour earlier. He noted that with the U.S. Senate vote to stay in permanent Daylight Saving Time, it would mean that our time zones would be the same.

Under permanent daylight time, P.E.I.'s summer would essentially remain the way it is now, Scotland said, but it would shift the Island's daylight hours in the winter months, with the most notable change being a very late sunrise in December and January, the latest being 8:55 a.m.

Some experts are criticizing the idea of a permanent move to daylight time. 

"I think they've made the wrong choice," said Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a professor of biology and director of the Clocklab at York University in Toronto, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Society for Chronobiology, an association of researchers who study biological clocks. 

"We advocate for year-round standard time, not the year-round daylight saving time."

She recently told Island Morning host Laura Chapin that scientists have tracked things like car accidents, workplace injuries and heart attacks, which rise by five to eight per cent for a few days every year after North Americans lose an hour of sleep with the time change in the spring. 

"We have a clock in the brain that has to be reset by light," Lakin-Thomas explained. "It needs the sunrise to move it ahead a little bit, because our body clocks run a little slow." 

She said people want to wake later and stay up later at night under daylight time, which can cause negative health effects including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.