The consensus from sleep experts across the country is that BC’s decision to switch to permanent daylight saving time is a mistake.
This decision was announced on Monday, March 2nd, and has had many feeling confused, upset or relieved.
Dr. Michael Pollock, a psychology instructor at Camosun College, says that the decision to stop changing our clocks twice a year was welcomed by himself and his colleagues, but he wishes that BC had opted to be on permanent standard time.
“Sleep experts are happy to get rid of the transition, but are not happy with what the choice was to have permanent,” Dr. Pollock told Victoria Buzz.
“For years they’ve been saying standard time was the way to go—that daylight saving time was only meant for the summer, it wasn’t meant to be used in the winter.”
He noted that having full-time daylight saving time will create all sorts of problems for British Columbians—specifically for their circadian clock.
Dr. Pollock describes the circadian clock as a part of the brain that is essentially, a little molecular clock that keeps track of what time of day it is.
“Even if you’re in a cave all day with no queues of whether it’s day or night, you’ll still get up and go to sleep in roughly 24-hour periods,” he explained.
According to Dr. Pollock, if daylight time is employed year-round, it will mean our sunlight will always be delayed an hour when compared to standard time.
“We’ll have artificially darkened mornings and without that sunlight early, our brains will be thinking we should be sleeping in and staying up later,” said Dr. Pollock.
“Each day we’ll be fighting an uphill battle, all winter long.”
Why daylight time over standard
The short answer to why BC chose daylight time over standard time is that sleep experts are not sure.
Even when the Province announced the change, Dr. Pollock noted that a source cited in the BC press release was actively against being on permanent daylight time.
“It’s a little ironic, in the press release that the government shared on their website, they shared one link to back up the health effects that they chose for why to go to daylight saving time permanent,” he said.
“If you click on that link, it’s to a Stanford medical report, it actually says the opposite—it says that going to standard permanent time is the better option.”
As of this publication, this cited Stanford study that refutes BC’s move to permanent daylight time remains a part of the press release.
Dr. Pollock predicts that this “permanent” change to daylight time will not last, and gave two examples of daylight time being made permanent and quickly repealed.
In the United States, in 1974, President Richard Nixon passed a law that made daylight time permanent, but the policy only lasted a short time.
“They only made it through one winter because people complained so much about going to work and school in the dark that they got rid of it,” said Dr. Pollock.
“The other time was in Russia in 2014, they also tried having daylight saving time all year round and the people complained so much that even the Russian government listened and changed it to standard time year-round.”
The impacts of the switch will not begin to be felt until after the first week of November, when the time would typically be shifted one hour backwards, allowing for additional sleep.
Why was daylight time established in the first place
In the early 1900s, daylight time was first conceived in England to allow people to take advantage of the longer days, but didn’t come into effect until later.
“It wasn’t until [the First World War]… the allies and Germans both adopted the daylight saving time, not for recreational purposes, but because back then it was really expensive to save energy,” said Dr. Pollock. “Back then it was really expensive for lighting in the evenings.”
He added that the reasons daylight time was established do not impact today’s society due to innovative measures like the LED lightbulb that save drastically on power costs.
Trade relations has also been a driving force in keeping the status quo of switching between daylight and standard time.
Former premier John Horgan had proposed a permanent switch to standard time during his time in power, but he would not pull the trigger on this policy until California, Washington and Oregon showed an interest in making the change.
Dr. Pollock theorizes that with trade relations soured between the US and Canada, Premier David Eby made the decision to finish what Horgan started, but chose daylight time over standard in the process.
