The Current - B.C. is all in on daylight saving time

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

British Columbians will move their clocks forward this weekend and leave them there. The province says that's what people want. UBC sleep researcher Elizabeth Keys says permanent standard time is better for our health — but the BC government didn't ask people whether they'd prefer it.

At Nethris, we are Canada's payroll experts. For more than 45 years, we have proudly supported local businesses. Powered by CGI, we provide a robust and secure technological infrastructure. Let our specialists handle your payroll so you can maximize your efficiency and focus on what truly matters. Try Nethriss now. The first month is free. Certain conditions apply. Visit Nethris.com.

N-E-T-H-R-I-S dot com. Nethris, much more than just a payroll software. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The clocks spring forward this weekend. Maybe you're looking forward to it. More light at the end of the day, or perhaps you are bracing yourself,

dark mornings again for a little while. The one thing that most people seem to agree on is that switching the clocks back and forth, twice a year, is a pain. For most British Columbians, this weekend's time change will be there last. Most of that province is switching permanently to daylight saving time.

The new time zone will be. be called Pacific Time. Here is what some folks in Vancouver think of that move. I love the fact that we have daylight savings time permanently from now on. Love it. To have the extra light in the evening, so much more important for me. In the summer, I love it and just not to have to change the clocks again. Poor dog starving to death every spring when he doesn't get his breakfast on time, you know, never going to happen again. I mean, I get it that there are people definitely also who are would rather have gone to the permanent standard time my dad is 90 he goes to the pool in the mornings and now it's going to be darker or longer when he's going to the pool but overall it's

going to improve the quality of life for everybody it doesn't really matter that much to me because my work doesn't require me to get up so early the truth is like i grew up in a place that did not have the switch of times so for me it's very normal I was introduced when I came to BC and it's like, oh, I see. So I got used to it, but I prefer not to think about it every year as in changing the clock hand. We're just changing the time for ourselves and our work schedule, right? So that's all that it really is. Plants are on a set light schedule.

They don't change. They have to stick with the light schedule that's outside, you know what I mean? Like from sprout to harvest, you know? Like, it's, it's always going to be the same. So for us to constantly change our daylight saving time, just to fit our standards, it's kind of, doesn't make sense. Man, there's a point about those plants. Why now? The province says this is what the public wants.

In 2019, the province did a survey, asking people if they would like to stop switching the clock and move to daylight time permanently. Almost everyone asked, 93% said yes. But most people also said that BC should wait until the American neighbors, including why, Washington State, Oregon and California did the same. Well, that has yet to happen. Here is what British Columbia's Attorney General, Nikki Sharma, told CBC Vancouver about the province, forging ahead of American jurisdictions.

Things have changed now in terms of our independence and our desire to stand our own two feet. It's, you know, something that we self-impose on ourselves, the pain of two-hour time changes. And actually, by changing it now, we're aligning with other parts of our province and the Yukon. So there is a sense, I think, that now's the time. Now's the time.

Not everyone agrees. Business owners and the city's airport authority are concerned about being out of sync with large parts of the Pacific coast. And those who study sleep have a bit of an issue with this as well. Elizabeth Keyes is a sleep researcher at the UBC Okanagan School of Nursing, member of Canadian Sleep Research Consortium. She is in Kelowna, British Columbia. Elizabeth, good morning. Good morning. You woke up early today before the sun.

appeared. How are you feeling? It's pretty dark out. So I've been trying to get lots of, lots of light to wake myself up in time for this, this interview. Welcome to my life. What is your concern when it comes to permanent daylight saving time? Yeah, so I think the biggest concern in many of my colleagues in Canada echo this is that permanent daylight savings time will kind of place us in a chronic misalignment with our circadian rhythm. And so when we think about sleep health, we really, you know, one of the big keys is early light morning exposure. And that really helps reset our circadian rhythm, which is really important for our timing

for sleep. And so if we're delaying that exposure to, you know, later, in the morning, especially in the darker winter months, which is what will happen, that's going to put us in a chronic kind of misalignment between our biological time and our social time. It is going to be darker in the morning. There's this online tool that CBC has put together. You can see what impact switching to permanent daylight saving time would have depending on where you live. In Prince Rupert, the sun won't come up until around 10 a.m. in the darkest parts of winter. For Vancouver, it's a bit after 9. am, it's going to be dark. Yeah, and I think that that is going to be an issue for a lot of people because they're going to be going to work, to school, in the dark, and they're not going to be getting that

really helpful kind of reset in their circadian rhythm in the morning, which is, again, that's like one of the really important cues for our body clocks. Aside from feeling permanently jet-lagged, what do we know about? the health impacts of not getting enough of that morning late? So we know that kind of this chronic misalignment is associated with kind of different chronic diseases in terms of increased rates of obesity diabetes, heart rate, or sorry, not heart rate, heart disease, and even some types of cancer. And so we see this when we look at people, because our time zones are so large,

geographically. We kind of see this based on people who live in the more western parts of our time zones. And so you can see those rates of diseases kind of increased in people who are living kind of on the west side of time zones compared to, you know, the more eastern central time zone periods where we're a little bit more in sync with the body clock. Do we know whether there are some people who are more susceptible to those impacts than others? Well, I think that I'm particularly concerned about adolescents because we know adolescents kind of have this natural shift in their rhythm to be a little bit later. And so they have a little bit trouble falling asleep earlier. They need to get up for school.

They're going to, they're already kind of sleep deprived because of that natural shift. And so this, I think, is going to exaggerate that even more. And so I think that's one group that's going to be a little bit more susceptible to that. We also know people with mental health, you know, tendency for low mood or mental health problems might be a little bit more susceptible to changes in their sleep. So sleep health and mental health is so intertwined that we, you know, it's going to, it might be really tough for people, especially folks. who are, you know, not having or tend to suffer from low mood in the, in the wintertime.

This is, I think, maybe going to exaggerate that. Do you worry, you have a couple of teenagers or teenage age people in your house? You're going to need a tow truck to get them out of bed in the morning if it's still dark until 9 or 930 in the morning? It's, you know, it's already a struggle. The struggle is real. But we try to, you know, implement. some pretty, not strict, but regular, regular things, you know, that I have the benefit of knowing about to help to help protect their sleep health. And I think this is going to be, I was, I really count

on them getting that morning exposure, light exposure, on their way to school, to wake themselves up. And they're just not going to have that for several months in the year. And so I think that it's going to become, you know, even more of a struggle. And yet the premier said that changing the clocks back and forth twice a year causes all sorts of problems for children, their parents lose sleep, the dog doesn't know what time it is, gets up at the wrong time, that's a real issue as well, to more car accidents because people are moving back and forth in terms of time. Do we know about the harms of switching the clock? Yeah, that's not great too.

So especially in the short term. So when we do the switching of the day to daylight savings type, particularly, in the springtime, when we're losing an hour of sleep, that really essentially cuts an hour of sleep from Canadians, you know, how much sleep they're getting. And we know already about a third of Canadians are not getting enough sleep. And so that sleepiness and sleep deprivation, especially in the short term, as people are adjusting to the time changes, is, you know, not good in the short term. And so we don't like the time shift either.

It's unfortunate that the option to adopt standard time wasn't included in that survey. That was mentioned earlier in the segment because, you know, it was, do you not want the time change and would you like to adopt daylight savings time? It wasn't even an option for, to adopt standard. standard time. If BC had had that option and people had to decided that they wanted permanent standard time instead of daylight time, this would have meant less light at the end of the day. And you could worry about what happens when you wake up, but it gives people a lot of joy to have those long, bright evenings where you can sit out and you can do things.

Isn't there some benefit to that as well? There might be. Like so people, like you said, like might feel a little bit, more enjoy their evenings more. We do know that a number of regions have tried daylight savings time. So Russia, which is kind of comparable in geography to Canada, tried it, I think, in the 2010s. And they ended up after about three years, you know, not continuing that. In the U.S., they did this as well in the 70s, and they ended up switching back. So I think this is something that it might sound really enjoyable.

But, you know, I think time will tell if British Columbians, once they have that switch, if they really want to keep those really dark, dark mornings in light of having more light later on in the daytime. Time will tell. Nicely done. I have to let you go, but just very, very briefly, for people who are feeling light deprived, he said with some experience. Do you have one word of advice? I think, you know, waking up and making sure you get all, if there's no outside daylight, you know, which would be the best one, even if it's cloudy, to kind of reset that rhythm.

You know, turn on all your lights inside the house or turn on the bright lights and get that kind of fix in the morning to help reset your rhythm. This is an issue for British Columbia, but I imagine a lot of people across the country will be paying close. attention to see how this unfolds and whether people like the choice that they have made. Elizabeth, thank you very much for this. Thank you. Appreciate you waking up early for us. Elizabeth Keyes is a sleep researcher at the UBC Okanagan School of Nursing. She was in Cologne, British Columbia. Your thoughts on the time change. Love it, hate it. Some of us really hate it when you lose an extra hour of sleep. You can email us, the current, at cbc.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.