Spring forward: When is the time change?

Clockmaker Scott Gow adjusts the hands of a clock at the Electric Time Company, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Medfield, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) (Charles Krupa/AP)

The groundhogs have made their predictions, the sun seems to rise a bit earlier each week, and Canadians appear to be wondering when it’s time to “spring forward.”

Search engine queries about daylight saving time have started to climb as Canadians look toward warmer days.

While daylight saving time is approaching, the tradition observed for more than a century doesn’t take place until Sunday, March 9.

While some parts of the country no longer observe the change, the majority of Canadians will set their clocks forward an hour on that day, with daylight time officially beginning at 2 a.m. Months later, they will “fall back” – setting the clocks an hour behind – at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2.

It’s controversial move, and twice a year experts speak publicly about the impacts of the seasonal changes on our sleep and productivity, as well as links to health complications such as headaches and heart problems.

Politicians, too, have considered cutting it at times, but the consensus has largely been that it would be challenging for Canadians to stop the change – either making daylight saving time permanent, or ceasing the March switch – if the U.S. doesn’t go along with it as well.

Trump wants to end daylight time

Recent comments from U.S. President Donald Trump suggest it’s possible that at some point, the country may set the clocks one final time, and stop changing them.

Posting when he was still president-elect, Trump said in early January that an end to daylight saving time might be on his party’s agenda.

“Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” he wrote on social media, pledging that Republicans would use their “best efforts” to put an end to it.

That plan was endorsed at the time by Elon Musk, among others.

Five years ago, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that proposed making daylight saving time permanent, meaning there would be no change in the fall. The bill stalled when it reached the House of Representatives, where delegates were unable to decide if it was better to keep permanent daylight time, or set the clocks once more in the fall, and then leave it.

With files from The Canadian Press and Reuters