Potential harm of permanent daylight time would be more ‘severe’ in Alberta: professor

Michael Antle, a professor of psychology and neuroscience joins Alberta Primetime to discuss the UCP government’s decision to end the time change.

Michael Antle, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Calgary, joins Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss the UCP government’s decision to move ahead with ending the time change in Alberta.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: You’re actually in favour of ditching the time change, locking on one time for the entirety of the year, but it’s not daylight time.

Michael Antle: Yeah, that’s right. People like me, who’ve been studying circadian rhythms, have been advocating for about 30 years to stop flipping our clocks twice a year. I think that’s a practice that’s time has come and gone, it’s really not serving its original purpose. But, you’ve got to pick the right time, and for Alberta, in particular, that right time would be the more natural standard time.

MH: If it is that we’re sticking to daylight time, paint us a picture of what that is and the point at which it might trigger concern for the average Albertan.

MA: A lot of people know that when we spring forward and fall back, that leads to some acute harm. We’re pretty tired for a few weeks after that time change and there’s some increased rates of accidents and health consequences with that one. But that’s acute, it lasts just for a few weeks. What we’re talking about, being on daylight time, is being misaligned for five months of the year, our circadian clock telling us that it’s too early to wake up, too early to go to work, too early to learn at school. It’s going to be really hard as those days get shorter and those mornings, the dawn gets later as we move through November into December. Right now, even at the end of October, a lot of people are noticing that it’s hard to wake up, and that’s going to get a lot harder through November and December. That’s something we haven’t experienced as Albertans. This has never been done here.

MH: How might that translate into potential health concerns?

MA: We know from large-scale studies looking at where you live in a time zone that the later your sunset, the less sleep you get and the less healthy you are. So people that live on the eastern edge of a time zone go to bed earlier, they get more sleep and they’re healthier. People on the western edge go to bed later and seem to have higher rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and they all have to get up at the same time and go to work and go to school at the same time, but it’s the going to bed later, when you have a later sunset that has health consequences.

MH: You mentioned going to work, how do you view potential impact on the business community or employees in general?

MA: It depends on what kind of job you’re in, but people working those regular eight to four, nine to five jobs are going to find it harder getting into work. They’re going to find it harder to be productive those first few hours of the day, because your body is still telling you you should be in bed, you should be asleep, this is too early to be up. For people who work later in the day, service industry, restaurants, they’ll probably be fine. But it’s those nine to five jobs and teachers, students, these all run on that sort of eight to four, nine to five schedule.

MH: Given your expertise, were you ever consulted by the Alberta government ahead of the decision now being made to move to daylight time?

MA: I did talk to the service minister’s team a few weeks ago to tell them a little bit about the history and the unique features of Alberta that would make this decision different here than other jurisdictions. In the United States, they have fairly short days compared to what we get in the summer, and their days aren’t as short as ours in the winter because they’re further south. So the consequences for them aren’t as severe as they are in Canada. Because Alberta has two of the three most northern cities, with Edmonton and Calgary being so far north, the implications for us, we have much shorter days in winter, are going to be more severe than any other city in Canada, with the exception of Saskatoon, but they don’t change their clocks there.

MH: So you gave them some insight, maybe a bit of advice. How was it received?

MA: I thought positively, although, when I gave them my recommendation, it’s different than where they seem to be going with their new announcement this week.

MH: As you may be aware, we’re a show about politics, and obviously we’re immersed in some pretty charged political times in this province at the moment. How do you see locking on daylight time potentially impacting that dynamic, the partisan divide?

MA: The divide is interesting because we looked at the results of that referendum they ran in 2021 and there’s a divide in the province based on where people lived and how they voted. So people on the eastern edge, like Lloydminster, really voted in favour of this and where they live, it’s actually probably a good thing for them. But other places on the opposite side of the province, like Grande Prairie, are going to find this really, really hard. So it’s more of a geographic divide than a political divide.

MH: By all accounts, it appears the government will be taking this forward. Given your expertise on psychology, on neuroscience, what advice would you offer to Albertans to how we, as individuals, take this forward? How do we live with it?

MA: Well, the most important thing is to listen to your body clock. If you can wake up naturally, then that’s the best thing of all, that will minimize what we call social jet lag. If you’re lucky enough to have a job where you can pick your own hours, pick what’s going to work for your body. Instead of forcing yourself up and out of bed early, listen to what your body wants to do. That will be the healthiest thing. Unfortunately, a lot of people in society don’t get to choose their hours, and those are the ones we’re worried about.