Wab Kinew now seems open to moving to a consistent year-round time, abolishing the need for us to change the clocks twice a year. This seems to be a bit of a backtrack since he was interviewed on CBC Radio One and said that his government didn’t have time for this since they were too busy focusing on affordability and healthcare.
Unlike BC, which is keeping with permanent daylight time, the NDP gov is open to keeping permanent daylight savings time. This is because there are a lot of health benefits associated with the extra hour of sunshine in the morning, though this comes with the tradeoff of having less sun in the evening when more likely to be out and about. But nothing is set in stone yet. Surveys with the public are ongoing.
Susan Holt must follow suit.
Is this being discussed in New Brunswick as well?
I found this article on it. New Brunswick not looking at permanent switch to daylight time, but some residents say they wouldn’t mind
Well that was the position BC was in a few years ago, but they caved due to public pressure. Same here in Manitoba. Our premier said it wouldn’t happen but now he’s looking into it. So there’s still hope!
I’m fine with them throwing a survey on to Engage MB or something, but if they do, I hope they provide full information about the ramifications of each option. The poll that was done in BC was kind of bullshit.
What was wrong with the survey in BC?
It provided two options: continuing to change the clocks twice per year, or remain on permanent daylight saving time. Permanent standard time - which seems to be the scientifically preferable solution - was not one of the options.
The BC government is now using the results of this thing to say that permanent DST is what people wanted.
Interesting. I wonder why they didn’t give people another option.
It could be an overcorrection to the BC proportional representation referendum. The referendum contained, like, four different options for different types of proportional representation, with convoluted explanations for each of them. Most people found the ballot too confusing, so most people didn’t mail it back (it was mail in only, and something like less than 1% of BC residents responded) or just chose to keep things the way they were (presumably, in part, because it was the least confusing option). The BC government might be trying to make the survey as simple as possible to avoid another debacle like that.
It could also be that the BC government decided ahead of them that they’d go with daylight time for economic reasons. By increasing sunlight in the evening you increase the window of time where people are likely to engage in economic activity. There may have even been some lobbying efforts behind that decision, who knows.
