Would you want to ditch the twice annual time changes if it meant the winter sun wouldn’t rise until after you’re at work? Or if it meant a 3 a.m. sunrise in late June?
As most Canadians steel themselves to lose an hour of sleep this weekend and face the inevitable grogginess that follows, CBC News has created two tools that show how eliminating time changes would play out in more than 550 locations across the country.
It’s a question some Canadians may have to grapple with sooner rather than later. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and his presidential advisor Elon Musk mused publicly in December about eliminating the twice yearly time changes in the U.S.
In Canada, at least three provinces — B.C., Manitoba and Ontario — have tied their time change policy to certain U.S. states.
Quebec held a public consultation on eliminating time changes late last year and is still reviewing the results, according to the province’s Ministry of Justice.
The Northwest Territories held a similar consultation in 2022 and Alberta held a referendum in 2021, with the territory voting to end clock changes and Alberta voting narrowly to keep them.
Yukon eliminated time changes in 2020.
There are places in Canada that do not adjust their clocks at all: Saskatchewan, Yukon and parts of B.C. and Nunavut. For these locations, the daylight saving time scenario — which adds an hour to current sunrise and sunset times — is entirely hypothetical.
But it isn’t a question of simply ending time changes in the places that observe them.
Depending on the system that's adopted — permanent daylight or permanent standard time — it could literally mean the difference between night and day.
The consequences of each system play out differently depending where a community is located within its time zone. They can also have a significant impact on physical and mental health.
Most provinces mulling a single year-round time have chosen to adopt permanent daylight time, which means skipping the “fall back” transition to standard time in November.
This wouldn't change anything in the spring and summer, when most of Canada is already on daylight time. The effect would be in the winter.
It would mean an extra hour of late afternoon light in December, pushing sunset from just after 4 p.m. to around 5 p.m. in cities including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.