Ontario’s northwest to adopt permanent daylight time

Ontario plans to move parts of its northwest to permanent daylight time on Nov. 1, ending twice-yearly clock changes in the region and lining it up with Manitoba, Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford said on Oct. 13.

The change would cover areas west of the 90th meridian, which currently sit in the central time zone, Rickford told The Canadian Press. The province intends to make a regulatory change to the Time Act to put it into effect.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced last month that his province would stop changing clocks and stay on daylight time year-round. That leaves Manitoba an hour ahead of the other Prairie provinces. Rickford said the decision “put northwestern Ontario, who sits in the central standard time zone, in a bit of a spot, to say the least.”

Rickford said the province weighed three options: shifting the northwest to eastern time, continuing to change clocks and falling out of step with both Ontario and Manitoba, or stopping the changes. It chose the third, which he jokingly called “Wab Kinew time.”

The province surveyed municipalities, businesses and First Nations before deciding. Rickford described the responses as “overwhelmingly unanimous, 90 to 94 per cent from every survey.”

New Democrat MPP Sol Mamakwa, who represents Kiiwetinoong, a riding that includes most of Ontario’s remote, fly-in First Nations, helped shape the plan. In a statement, Mamakwa said he was happy the advocacy to observe daylight time would be implemented permanently and praised what he called collaborative efforts to deliver what works for the North.

The move adds Ontario to a growing list of jurisdictions leaving the clock-change cycle. British Columbia announced in March that it would move to permanent Pacific daylight time. Alberta switched to permanent daylight time this year and now matches Saskatchewan year-round, CP reported.

For residents, the practical effect is easiest to see in the numbers. As Canada News Media reported on Oct. 8, clocks in the rest of Ontario fall back to eastern standard time at 2 a.m. on Nov. 1. Central daylight time and eastern standard time are both five hours behind UTC, so the northwest would share the same clock as Toronto and Winnipeg through the winter. When Toronto springs forward again in March, the northwest would be an hour behind it, while staying level with Manitoba.

Several questions remain open. The reports reviewed do not list which communities fall under the change, and the regulation itself was not available when this article was published. The details here are as reported by The Canadian Press and Narcity, and the plan should be treated as a stated intention until the regulation is filed.

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Via The Canadian Press (CP24). Additional reporting from Narcity.