Alberta in ‘a lucky position’ to lock on Daylight Saving Time: Yukon

Andrew Smith, an intergovernmental relations officer with the Yukon government, joins Alberta Primetime to discuss the move to end the time change in Alberta.

With the tabling of new legislation, the Alberta government has begun the process of ending twice yearly changes to the clocks and locking on permanent Daylight Saving Time. Andrew Smith, the Intergovernmental Relations Officer with the Yukon government joins Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss what the road could look like since he led the way in Yukon’s transition.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Yukon made the change to its own permanent time zone, starting back in late 2020. What motivated the move?

Andrew Smith: I think Alberta has had a long standing conversation, as has B.C. and Yukon, about whether this is something that’s worthwhile doing anymore. In late 2019, the premier of B.C. and Yukon had a conversation and they said “Hey, I think we’re ready and we’re moving on some legislative stuff, so why don’t we go together since we’re already in that shared longitude and try to keep things in sync?”

But things didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would. Things got complicated in early 2020, but Yukon made its regulatory change. B.C. made their legislation, but didn’t enact it until this year and it was something that overwhelmingly Yukoners were interested in going on to one time year round, so we wanted to follow that as well.

MH: What were you tasked with in leading the change?

AS: There was the public facing stuff to make sure we got that public engagement sorted out and it turned out to be our greatest number of public engagements that Yukon had seen up to that point. Then there was a question of the regulatory and what we had to do within our own regulations to change our time zone and make sure we had the legal authority to do so.

Then working with industry, finding out who governs time and making sure that they know what Yukon had decided and making sure that all that stuff was rolled out to be smooth for Yukoners and businesses.

MH: So much of that I have to think revolves around technology. What hurdles might Albertans need to be looking out for?

AS: I think Alberta and other jurisdictions are lucky that Yukon has done this in recent history, in a highly technologicalized world. We’ve gone through some of the things to understand what has to happen. For consumers and for individuals, it’s telecom networks, making sure that they know what time it is that people primarily get the time off the phone or things that are connected to the internet, so making sure that those things are all locked in.

Yukon had only a couple of complications in its industries in particular, that’s airlines. Airline schedules then had to adjust between Alberta and B.C. depending on the year. But Alberta will have a much more diverse set of industries and connections that require time to be tracked. Think electricity transmission, trains, pipelines, things that cross borders into time zones, those would have new relationships between each other.

MH: What about coordination, collaboration, even between different orders of government? What’s a must in that regard?

AS: Because of the way it rolled for Yukon and we were so small and we were going at it on our own, that collaboration with B.C. existed until it didn’t because other priorities took hold. You’re in a lucky position because if you’re aligning this project in time with B.C., and now in NWT coming along with you folks, you’re at a real advantage because you’re going to have millions of people and hundreds of thousands of businesses that are going to have to have the right time and have things sorted out correctly.

Because these things are happening at the same time, you’re probably going to have an easier time. Another advantage I think you would have is that telecoms and internet service providers and major companies who have control in time, exist as businesses within your province and they’ll have a need to do that and be in their self interest to do it. Whereas in Yukon, we had to do a lot of outreach to make sure people understood what was going on.

MH: Are there regulatory changes that should be considered?

AS: The only regulation we had to change was in our Interpretation Act. The Yukon Act allows the Yukon being in control of this time zone and then our Interpretation Act has a section on what time it is, so we change the regulation within there.

I did read through what Alberta is proposing and you’ve got much more depth in what is prescribed and who is and is not under what circumstances allowed to use something other than official time. I think you’ve gotten a bit further down the distance, whereas ours just says UTC minus seven year round. That’s pretty much the end of the regulation for us.

MH: How do you feel the business community needs to fit into this equation? How soon should businesses be engaging in that prep?

AS: I think you should be making yourselves aware of it right now. The lesson I learned when Yukon did it and from these timezone databases that exist, is that they like to have one year notice before a major change like this happens. You guys are deeply within that one year timeline right now, so there might be a bit of pushback to get these things done in a coordinated and timely way with those external agencies and databases.

But it’s not something you should be forgetting about too soon. There will be hangover effects, like if you book a calendar appointment right now for after November 2026. It’s going to think that it’s still in that time zone. So it’ll take time for things to straighten out after that. There’s complications that may or may not be able to be helped through technology, so you have to be planning ahead and thinking about it.

MH: Has all gone well with the Yukon experience? Would you label it a success more than five years in?

AS: I think the delivery of it has been successful. For something that hadn’t been done that there was no real guidebook for. Fortunately, I’ve written a bunch of that stuff down and been able to share it with Alberta, B.C., and NWT, so it should be a bit easier for them on that process. We had a couple hiccups with some companies just not knowing that this had happened and I think that’s just a matter of exposure.

With Alberta and B.C. doing these things at the same time, if that’s the way it goes, you’ve got a much better chance of things going smoothly because there’s more attention paid for it. I think Yukoners are very satisfied with not having to change the clocks. It’s been six years of that and watching other people have frustrations across Canada.