At this year’s municipal election, Alberta residents are being asked their opinion on changing to Daylight Savings Time, but there are many in the community who are wondering if it is that simple.
The question on the 2018 ballot is “Do you want Alberta to adopt year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is summer hours, eliminating the need to change our clocks twice a year?”
Drumheller resident Sharon Oster has concerns about the question and feels there should be more than two options on the ballot, and feel Albertans should be given the option of choosing to observe Mountain Standard Time year-round. She reached out to Drumheller-Stettler MLA Nate Horner to ask him why no option was given.
He responded many Albertans would like to see the change.
“This is a topic that affects everyone within our province and also beyond our borders, for example with travel plans and airline flights, calling friends and family in different time zones, and even watching professional sports,” he states.
He adds, Service Alberta completed a survey in 2019 where 141,000 Albertans responded and 91 per cent said they would prefer to observe Daylight Saving Time.
She is grateful for the reply but felt her question wasn’t answered.
“Why weren’t Albertans given that choice? In regards to the survey conducted by Service Alberta, if you didn’t want to fiddle with changing your clocks twice a year…the only other option was DST all year. The option of adopting year-round observance of Mountain Standard time was not given! How many of the 91% of the 141,000 surveyed, would have chosen that option?” she states adding, “Nor has there been any media references to what staying on DST means, especially for mental health and not seeing the light of day, in mid-winter, until 9:30 or later.”
More concerns were expressed in an article written by Heath McCoy at the University of Calgary, citing the stance of Dr. Michael Antle, University of Calgary professor in the Department of Psychology.
He points out “Albertans, who live in the Mountain Standard Time Zone, would be especially impacted by the permanent DST move. Our exposure to daylight fluctuates within time zones, depending on where one is geographically located within their zones. The further west we are within our time zones makes for later morning light.
“That means in Calgary our sunrise in December won’t come until after 9:30 in the morning. Edmonton’s sunrise will be even later, and Grande Prairie won’t see the light of dawn until almost 10:30 a.m.”
In 2017 NDP MLA Thomas Dang introduced a private members bill to scrap Daylight Saving time and remain on Mountain Daylight Saving Time.
It was defeated.

Kneehill County is looking to continue its Pilot Pay for Parking program for Horseshoe Canyon and may make some tweaks in the coming season.
Kneehill council discussed the pilot program at its September 28 meeting.
“It was sort of a bad year to gauge any opportunity there with COVID… it has not gone away, and we don’t have the tourist traffic we normally have,” said Reeve Jerry Wittstock, adding extreme weather, and lack of international traffic also affected the attendance numbers.
Last summer, the county staffed Horseshoe Canyon with two parking attendants from Thursday to Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For the 76 days they were on-site during the season, there were 7,696 total vehicles. The vast majority were from Alberta (88 per cent), next were from BC (6 per cent).
The project was budgeted for $40,000, but came in considerably lower, with expenses of just over $20,000. It brought in about $17,500 in revenue.
“You don’t gain much money on recreational activities, it’s something that you do strictly for recreation. You don’t make any money on swimming pools, you don’t make any money on arenas, but is something you provide because people use these things,” he said. “That’s what it takes to bring people to your community.”
He says there are some tweaks they could make to the program that might make it more profitable. He notes, often when starting at 11 a.m.,there were many cars already in the parking lot.
“We’ll change it up a bit next year, and with any luck, next year will be normal, if there is such a thing as being normal,” said Wittstock.
A main advantage of the program was having staff on-site to answer questions, as well as look after the site. During that time they had a good relationship with Travel Drumheller, who had ambassadors at the site. Council would like to have Kneehill ambassadors working at the site. They also see the potential for kiosks and food trucks at the site. Last year there were no applications taken out to offer these services.
“Usually on the weekend when there is high traffic there, we really didn’t have anyone there, except in this past year. It worked out very well, because we didn’t have to send a crew there to do an emergency clean up because the people there were taking care of that stuff. We are looking forward to doing this again and getting a little more information,” said Wittstock.
Kneehill council passed a motion to include provisions for paid parking and ambassador program at Horseshoe Canyon in the 2022 budget.