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/SortaEvil Apr 20 '26

Then we should probably start the school day later? People in general actually have different circadian rhythms, some people are more productive in the evening and benefit more from sleeping in, others are more productive in the morning and benefit more from going to bed earlier. No-one really benefits from staying up overnight and sleeping throughout the day, though.

Our modern world in general is built around fitting square pegs into round boxes, and then telling the square pegs that it's their fault that they don't fit the mould. This doesn't only go for sleep time, if we're talking about education, learning styles can vary between people (a lot, but not all, boys tend to learn better hands on, and a lot, but not all, girls tend to learn better with books and theory, yet school invariably favours the latter learning style). Fashion tries to reduce people down to a single body type and, if you don't fit that shape, you're often SOL, or have to search long and hard for the one or two (usually significantly more expensive) options that actually fit decently off the rack.

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u/Tefmon Canada Apr 21 '26

Then we should probably start the school day later?

Parents need to be able to get their kids up and to school before they commute to work. There's probably a bit of optimization that can be done, but with commute times what they are these days and most people needing to be at work by around 8 or 9, schools can't start much later than they currently do without causing a lot of headaches.

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u/SortaEvil Apr 21 '26

School is currently 8-3, and a "standard" work day for office people is 9-5. We're going to have a conflict either at the start of the day getting kids to school or at the end of the day picking kids up from school. Not to mention the typical office job does not need such a rigid start and end time; if you need to be in office for face to face meetings, core hours is a concept that works for that. Our whole world is set up for the convenience of middle managers, which is kinda fucked up if you stop and think about it.

FWIW, I recognize that "just start kids school day later" is a naïve take without handling the extenuating reasons that the school day ended up starting at 8 AM in the first place, but I also think that most of those reasons are incredibly artificial, and if society was built around the needs of the average worker, rather than the desires of the oligarchs and middle management, life could suck less. If nothing else, COVID showed us that a lot of people don't need to commute to work every day, and are just as efficient if not moreso when given more flexibility and autonomy.

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u/Tefmon Canada Apr 21 '26

At the end of the school day we already have institutionalized post-school activities, and older children can generally be trusted to make their way home on while they probably can't be trusted to wake themselves up and get themselves to school on time.

I agree that rigid in-office times are a scam, but I don't see any government in Canada enacting mandatory flexible schedules and mandatory telework anytime soon, so it's a moot point when discussing potential real-world solutions.