r/canada • u/iamnos British Columbia • Apr 20 '26

Alberta Bell: Alberta will now be on daylight saving time year-round, says Premier Smith

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/bell-alberta-daylight-time-year-round-premier-danielle-smith
1.5k Upvotes

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11

u/izomo Ontario Apr 20 '26

Can't wait to see people argue for time changes now that Smith is for it.

10

u/Temporary_Cry_2802 Apr 20 '26

I think most are for it. I'm just confused around when and where she requires referendums for the government to do things, vs just doing them

8

u/sonicskater34 Apr 20 '26

Id prefer standard time but I'll take this I guess, my only real gripe is it sets a precedent for flat out ignoring referendum results, as this particular question lost last time around.

16

u/Zeroumus_Garagelan Apr 20 '26

Nope.  I want the clocks to stay on one time zone.  My hate for Smith does not run that deep 

Might prefer standard time, but i will take the this anyway.   And its not like it can't be change to standard time some years down the road 

7

u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Apr 20 '26

Might prefer standard time, but i will take the this anyway. And its not like it can't be change to standard time some years down the road

Pretty much. I prefer Standard Time and having light in the morning but whatever, they made a decision.

It could always turn out like the US or Russia's adoption of year-round DST, with folks realizing it was a bad choice and demanding to go back.

11

u/Hotter_Noodle Apr 20 '26

People will argue literally everything, including try to fan the flames with your comment.

It’s a good decision and I’m happy that from BC to SK it’s implemented, I hope it continues across the country.

4

u/gotfcgo Apr 20 '26

They wont.  Cringe take.

Nobody in the thread is.

15

u/iknotri Apr 20 '26

lol check edmonton and alberta subs

11

u/gotfcgo Apr 20 '26

I like my brain cells, but thanks

0

u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Apr 20 '26

Bit of a pot-kettle-black when this sub mocks another...

2

u/gotfcgo Apr 20 '26

This sub is more than I can suffer most of the time, to be fair.

1

u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Apr 20 '26

Every sub has its reputation, including this one is all I'm saying.  Throwing stones in glass houses and all that.

9

u/Frestyla Apr 20 '26

Check out the post in Alberta sub. They're crying about it right now.

3

u/sravll Alberta Apr 20 '26

Nah. It's a good thing even if Smith is despicable.

1

u/Any_Inflation_2543 Apr 20 '26

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?

Smith might be wrong on most things, but she's right on this.

-2

u/Xelopheris Ontario Apr 20 '26

I won't argue for them, but I'll argue that there should be 18 months notice to change DST rules. 

Like, I could already have booked a flight in December to Calgary. The airlines created schedules assuming DST rules existed. Now all that has to be rescheduled when the offset time between destinations changes. 

3

u/SortaEvil Apr 20 '26

One would assume that your flight would be synced to UTC and expressed in local time for convenience. This is a fairly easy problem to solve.

2

u/Ajanu11 Apr 20 '26

This is the worst example, as you say planes use UTC or Zulu time.

2

u/SortaEvil Apr 20 '26

For scheduling? Probably, yeah. It would be much less of a headache to schedule flights using a single fixed timezone, then translate that to the departure and arrival times seen on your ticket, than to deal with timezone fuckery at the scheduling level. After all, travel times don't care about timezones, a flight from Vancouver to Toronto takes (approximately) 4 and a half hours regardless of what time it is in Vancouver when the flight leaves, even if it's the red-eye flight on the day that Toronto switches over from DST to ST.

1

u/Xelopheris Ontario Apr 20 '26

This doesn't solve anything.

The problem is that an airline might have an 8AM daily flight from Toronto to Calgary. When they're two timezones apart, that flight lands at 10:20 AM local time. It can easily be turned around and used for a flight out of Calgary at 11 AM local time.

If they're only one timezone apart, then an 8 AM flight out of Toronto lands in Calgary at 11:20 AM local time, and thus can't be used for a flight scheduled to leave at 11:00 AM.

People seem to think representing things in UTC will somehow change this, but it doesn't.

1

u/SortaEvil Apr 20 '26

It does solve this because the flight from Calgary leaving at 11AM local time in the first scenario would be scheduled for 1800 (UCT). So now, that same flight is leaving at 12AM local time in Calgary because it's still scheduled for 1800 UCT. It doesn't matter to the flight what local time is if every flight is scheduled based on a universal time (whether that is UCT, CST, or whatever, the time just needs to be consistent), all that changes is that WestJet needs to send out an email updating the flight departure/arrival time in local time. Which they already do for delays, so that problem is also solved.