Would you rather go to work in the dark or come home in the dark? As provinces mull getting rid of time changes, a new CBC tool shows Canadians how sunrises and sunsets would change in their community
Ben Nelms/CBC News
Would you want to ditch the twice annual time changes if it meant the winter sun wouldn’t rise until after you’re at work? Or if it meant a 3 a.m. sunrise in late June?
As most Canadians steel themselves to lose an hour of sleep this weekend and face the inevitable grogginess that follows, CBC News has created two tools that show how eliminating time changes would play out in more than 550 locations across the country.
It’s a question some Canadians may have to grapple with sooner rather than later. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and his presidential advisor Elon Musk mused publicly in December about eliminating the twice yearly time changes in the U.S.
In Canada, at least three provinces — B.C., Manitoba and Ontario — have tied their time change policy to certain U.S. states.
Quebec held a public consultation on eliminating time changes late last year and is still reviewing the results, according to the province’s Ministry of Justice.
The Northwest Territories held a similar consultation in 2022 and Alberta held a referendum in 2021, with the territory voting to end clock changes and Alberta voting narrowly to keep them.
Yukon eliminated time changes in 2020.
There are places in Canada that do not adjust their clocks at all: Saskatchewan, Yukon and parts of B.C. and Nunavut. For these locations, the daylight saving time scenario — which adds an hour to current sunrise and sunset times — is entirely hypothetical.
But it isn’t a question of simply ending time changes in the places that observe them.
Depending on the system that’s adopted — permanent daylight or permanent standard time — it could literally mean the difference between night and day.
The consequences of each system play out differently depending where a community is located within its time zone. They can also have a significant impact on physical and mental health.
Most provinces mulling a single year-round time have chosen to adopt permanent daylight time, the flip side of this choice is that in most Canadian locations — including Toronto, pictured above — the winter sun wouldn’t come up until many people are at work or school. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press) Later winter sunrises on daylight time
Most provinces mulling a single year-round time have chosen to adopt permanent daylight time, which means skipping the “fall back” transition to standard time in November.
This wouldn’t change anything in the spring and summer, when most of Canada is already on daylight time. The effect would be in the winter.
It would mean an extra hour of late afternoon light in December, pushing sunset from just after 4 p.m. to around 5 p.m. in cities including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Click or tap on different points in the maps below to see when the sun will rise and set on the shortest day of the year.
Peter Warwick of St. Catharines, Ont., got tired of waiting for the province to transition to permanent daylight time and decided to go it alone.
“I just thought, I’m going to try it myself and see how it works for me. And I loved it.”
Warwick, a semi-retired writer, leaves the clocks that don’t automatically change, including the one in his bedroom, on daylight time in the fall and continues to get up at the same time.
The other clocks, including his computer, do fall back so he doesn’t miss appointments.
Peter Warwick of St. Catharines, Ont., maximizes the amount of natural light in his home. He prefers to remain on daylight time year round, even when the rest of the province falls back in November. (Prasanjeet Choudhury/CBC) Doing this, he says, gives him a psychological boost in the winter.
“I personally like an extra hour of light later in the day than in the morning,” he said. “I psychologically get a longer day.”
The flip side of permanent daylight time? In most places — including the three biggest cities: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver — it means the winter sun wouldn’t come up until many people are at work or school.
This effect is most pronounced for places in the north and west of their time zones.
In a 2024 paper published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, researchers Joseph De Koninck, Ashley Nixon and Robert Godbout used the example of Gaspé, Que., and Thunder Bay, Ont., which are at opposite ends of the Eastern time zone, to illustrate this.
Permanent daylight time would push sunrise in Vancouver past 9 a.m. in December. (Christer Waara/CBC) On Dec. 21, 2025, the shortest day of the year, residents of Gaspé would have an 8:09 a.m. sunrise under permanent daylight time. In Thunder Bay, however, the sun would not come up until 9:46 a.m., more than 90 minutes later.
Other northern and western cities would be similarly affected. In Vancouver, the latest winter sunrise on permanent daylight time would be at 9:08 a.m.; in Edmonton, 9:50 a.m. and in Yellowknife, a punishing 11:08 a.m.
The U.S. moved briefly to permanent daylight time in 1974, but ended the experiment within a year due to complaints about dark winter mornings. Two U.S. states, Arizona and Hawaii, do not observe daylight saving time.
Standard time healthier, sleep expert says
Sleep experts warn permanent daylight time would disrupt sleep patterns and throw our internal clocks out of sync with our daily schedules.
This is because morning light has the greatest effect on the circadian clock, which governs the body’s sleep-wake cycle, explains Myriam Juda, a circadian rhythm and sleep researcher at Simon Fraser University.
Sleep researcher Myriam Juda, pictured on the beach in Gibsons, B.C., says standard time is more in line with the body’s natural rhythms. (Ryan McLeod/CBC) With regular exposure to morning sun “you will release more melatonin at night,” Juda explained.
“It will make you more alert during the day, which is good for … well-being and also productivity at work. And it will make you more sleepy at night,” she said.
“Most of us are actually more night owls than we’re supposed to be because we’re not getting enough light in the morning.”
Permanent daylight time, with its later sunrises, would make it harder for most people to get this important morning light, according to Juda.
Our bodies naturally expect to be awake when it’s light, asleep when it’s dark and have midday be the point when the sun is highest in the sky, she says, noting this is the case under standard (winter) time.
Daylight time knocks this rhythm out of alignment, making us wake up in the dark. It pushes both solar noon — the time the sun is highest in the sky — and sunset artificially later.
Permanent daylight time, with its later sunrises, can make it harder for most people to get important morning light, according to sleep researchers. (Elena Elisseeva/Shutterstock) This means that the time our body thinks it is based on the sun becomes out of sync with our social calendars, and when we’re sleeping and waking up, Juda explained.
She says this misalignment, which has been studied in shift workers, has been linked to numerous health consequences including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some forms of cancer and also depression. Permanent daylight time would mean people would get less sleep and be more fatigued during the day, she explained.
“And we know that sleep is really important for our productivity and for our well-being, for our mood. So … we would expect health consequences, accidents for example, through fatigue,” she said.
Permanent standard time means long summer nights would get shorter in cities like Montreal, where the latest sunset in June would move from 8:48 p.m. to 7:48 p.m. (Patrick Morrell/CBC) So which parts of the country would win and lose under permanent standard time? Winters would stay the same, but some places would be in for some very early sunrises in mid to late June.
In the three biggest cities, the earliest summer sunrise would shift between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. In places such as Gaspé and Sept Iles, Que., Fort McMurray, Alta., and Prince George, B.C., sunrise would be between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m.
And in the North, the effect would be even more extreme: Yellowknife would get a 2:39 a.m. sunrise, and some parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut would see the sun come up in the 1 a.m. hour.
It would also mean those long summer nights would get a bit shorter, with sunset moving from just after 9 p.m. to around 8 p.m. in Toronto and Vancouver, and from 8:48 p.m. to 7:48 p.m. in Montreal.
Juda acknowledges Canadians will feel differently about this depending on their schedules and where they live.
She says the trade-offs need to be carefully considered. “Although it seems very appealing to have more light in the evening, the consequences and being fatigued are maybe not a good trade off, right?”
