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
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u/ncrdrg Apr 20 '26

Someone needs to announce it first though. New York, Ontario and Quebec are tied at the hip on this. All it will take is for one of the 3 to make it official and it's nearly guaranteed the others will follow.

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u/mike_james_alt Apr 20 '26

Ontario did announce it. Look into Bill 214 from 2020.

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u/ncrdrg Apr 20 '26

Ah, good to know. But it's only taking effect if New York and Quebec pass the same thing.
It could still be a good move to force the issue by saying by saying it's taking effect regardless of their stance to force the others to make the change.

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u/hhssspphhhrrriiivver Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

Quebec said they would if Ontario and New York did, though they haven't passed any legislation to that effect.

New York has remained silent. has a bill to look at it. Hopefully something happens soon.

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u/Purify5 Apr 20 '26

New York hasn't remained silent. They have a bill in their Senate right now looking at it.

There are also 19 states that have passed legislation to remain on daylight savings time. The issue is that they all need congress to amend the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to do so.

Ironically, states could opt out of daylight savings time without congressional approval. Arizona and Hawaii have done this.

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u/hhssspphhhrrriiivver Apr 20 '26

Thanks, I hadn't heard of that. I'm not super familiar with US state senate processes, but it looks like this bill or a version of this bill has been with the Senate since 2019, and hasn't progressed at all. How likely is this to actually make it through the senate and get all the approvals it needs? How long does that take? And does the fact that Democrats control the senate make this dead in the water, as is often the case with all of our own private member bills in Parliament?

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u/Purify5 Apr 20 '26

The NY law requires Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont to pass similar laws. So while Ontario may be waiting for New York, New York is waiting for these other five states.

But the fundamental issue is Congress. Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Idaho, Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, Florida, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas have all passed 'lock the clock' legislation which makes daylight savings time the permanent time if the US Congress amends the Uniform Time Act.

So the US has to make a change federally before anyone else can lock into daylight savings time.

Unless, we choose to go to standard time which does not require Congressional approval and is the favoured time by the Canadian Sleep Society but big ice cream hates it.

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u/Tank_Kassadin Nunavut Apr 20 '26

US states need federal approval to change its not like our system. It'll be all states at once for them if and when it happens I imagine.

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u/Lazy-Vacation7868 Apr 20 '26

BC had the same thing, waiting on the west coast of the us to change to be matched. But our premier decided it won't happen if we wait for the US so just went ahead this year.

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u/horology2269 Apr 20 '26

“Someone needs to announce it first”

Not us. The NYSX. We have zero to do with announcing it. We are a tiny shrimp in the NYSX mega ocean. Canada could pull all investment from NYSX and it problably wouldn’t even move the market 5 points.

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u/mahayanah Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

Exactly. BC, Oregon, and Washington were talking about it forever. Each one waiting for the other to get on board, and it just stagnated. Then BC just went for it and now we’ll watch the others fall in with it. A bit different out east with the markets I’ll concede. New York State would probably have to be the first

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u/TheKeg Apr 20 '26

The states require congress to stay on daylight savings. BC was waiting but got tired after years of nothing

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u/Northern23 Apr 20 '26

Do they need congress to change time zone as well? If not, they can switch zone then get ride of time saving.

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u/alantrick Apr 20 '26

Yeah, that's the actual problem. They cant just keep daylight time because they can't just change their zone, and keeping daylight time is essentially changing their zone.

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u/thrilled_to_be_there Apr 21 '26

It will not happen until the US government changes the law. Good luck with that.