Alberta Time: We Kept the Wrong Hour

By: Katherine (Kate) White and Ryker Ironside

Ending the clock switch was the right call. Keeping daylight time forever was not.

This Sunday, November 1, most of North America gets a bonus hour of sleep. Alberta does not. Under legislation passed this year, the province is staying on daylight time year-round and rebranding it “Alberta Time.”

If this feels like déjà vu, it should. Albertans voted on this exact question in October 2021, and permanent daylight time lost, 50.2% to 49.8%, by fewer than 3,000 votes. Close? Absolutely. But a narrow no is still a no. The question didn’t make this month’s referendum ballot either, despite plenty of company on it. Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi urged the government to “abide by the results of that referendum.” It didn’t.

So let’s give credit where it’s due, then talk about the hour we kept.

The government got half of it right

Nobody likes changing the clocks. The spring switch is especially rough: losing an hour of sleep has been linked to short-term spikes in heart attacks and traffic accidents while our bodies adjust. Ending the switch is a perfectly reasonable goal, and B.C., Manitoba, Yukon and the Northwest Territories are all moving the same way.

But the real problem with the switch is lost sleep. Permanent daylight time doesn’t fix lost sleep. It makes it permanent.

Here’s why. Our internal clocks run on light. Morning light tells the body the day has started; evening light tells it to keep going. Permanent daylight time takes an hour of light out of the morning and moves it into the evening, which is exactly backwards. Our bodies drift later and falling asleep gets harder, but the alarm clock, the 7 a.m. shift and the school bell don’t move. The result is a small sleep debt, every workday, all winter long.

Now picture a December morning. Under Alberta Time, Calgary’s latest sunrise lands around 9:40 a.m., according to an analysis published this month in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Edmonton’s is later still. That’s the commute, the school drop-off and most of your first meeting, all in the dark.

What the research actually says

This isn’t a fringe position. In October, researchers from UBC and SFU writing in the CMAJ concluded the evidence favours permanent standard time because it better matches human circadian biology. They flagged early-schedule workers, students and teenagers, and people prone to seasonal depression as the groups most affected. Between 1% and 3% of Canadians

have seasonal affective disorder and up to 15% experience milder winter dips in mood, sleep and energy. A frontline treatment is bright morning light, which is precisely what permanent daylight time pushes later.

In fairness to the other side, a 2025 Stanford study in PNAS found permanent daylight time still beats switching twice a year, delivering roughly two-thirds of the health benefit of permanent standard time. So Alberta Time isn’t the worst option on the menu. It’s just not the best one, and we ordered it anyway.

Standard time is called standard for a reason. If we’re going to stop changing the clocks, we should stop on standard time.

The minor complaints (that aren’t that minor)

We quit on the wrong switch. Falling back is the good one. That extra hour in November is the closest thing to a free lunch the calendar offers, and we traded it away to keep spring’s hangover forever.

Your calendar is about to gaslight you. Every phone, laptop and server has spent decades learning that Alberta falls back in November. Microsoft has pushed a time zone update, but expect at least one meeting next week where half the attendees show up an hour early. Starting Sunday, Toronto is one hour ahead of us instead of two, and Houston is on the same clock as Calgary. “When is that meeting?” has been a running refrain at Blue Rock Strategic Advisory for weeks, usually answered with some colourful language and a time zone converter.

The fix

It’s too late for this November. But the province should leave itself the option of one more fall-back next year, and then stay on standard time for good.

Alberta Time puts us on the same clock as Saskatchewan. The catch: Calgary sits about 9.5 degrees of longitude west of Regina, which on solar time alone means the sun comes up roughly 38 minutes later on the very same clock. Let’s be like Saskatchewan and stop switching. We just shouldn’t borrow their clock.

Sources

• Elections Alberta, 2021 Daylight Saving Time referendum official results

• The Canadian Press via Yahoo News, "Bill 31: Alberta moves to formalize switch to permanent daylight savings time" (April 2026)

• Sci.News, "Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health, Canadian Analysis Says" (Lam, Mistlberger & Baylis, CMAJ, October 2026)

• Stanford Medicine, "Study suggests most Americans would be healthier without daylight saving time" (PNAS, September 2025)

• Moving2Canada, "B.C., Alberta, Manitoba Won't Turn Clocks Back" October 2026

• Microsoft Tech Community, "Alberta 2026 time zone update available now"