Tomorrow British Columbia, like other provinces that are not Saskatchewan, will move its clocks ahead one hour as it moves to Daylight Time. However, like Saskatchewan, it will not be rolling the clocks back one hour in November. Premier David Eby announced this past Monday that British Columbia will stay permanently on Daylight Time going forward.

This has started a debate in other provinces, including here in Manitoba, about whether the rest of us should do away with the time change. I have varying thoughts about this. I have lived fifty out of fifty-two years in Manitoba, the other two in Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan stays on Central Standard Time year round officially. (Geographically they are in the Mountain Time Zone so technically they are on Mountain Daylight Time, as I’ve very adamantly been informed of on Reddit a few times, but effectively it makes no difference). However you look at it, it meant that in the summer without a time change, the sun would come up in Saskatoon around 4:30 a.m. for a good portion of June. Without some good blackout curtains in our rental, it was maddening.

It was because of this that I was happy to go back to the time change when we returned to Manitoba. Like everyone else, I don’t like the first few days after the spring change, but I adjust fairly quickly. That being said, the statistics say that automobile accidents and health issues such as heart attacks and strokes go up following the spring time change. So there is definitely good reason to do away with it.

So, then the question becomes, what do we do?

One camp wants to move to permanent Daylight Time. More sunlight after work and the sun doesn’t come up until about 5:30 a.m. in the summer, however in the winter the sun doesn’t come up until after 9:00 a.m., some days until almost 9:30 a.m. depending on how far west you are in the province. This can be a problem for kids walking to school.

The other camp wants to move to permanent Standard Time. But then you get the opposite. The sun comes up around 4:30 a.m. for much of June, and we lose the whole hour that we are used to having in the summer months.

My solution, we should just do like Newfoundland, split the difference, and go with the halfway point between CST and CDT with our own time zone that is off by a half hour. We should adopt UTC -5.5 permanently. It’s the most obvious compromise.

This somewhat solves the problems with picking either of the two extremes. Yes, a handful of days in December would still have the sun rising after 9:00, but only by a few minutes and there would be much more twilight than there would be under permanent CDT. Also, many of the days in question would be during the two weeks of winter break. In the summer, the sun would still come up around 5:00 a.m., but that is arguably better than 4:30 a.m. and we would still at least get a little bit more evening sun than Saskatchewan.

I’ve seen arguments that it would hurt relations with close by jurisdictions, but I doubt the effects would be as big as people predict, if they happen at all. “What about North Dakota?” seems like a piss poor reason not to get our own issue fixed.

So, let’s move to Manitoba Standard Time.