Most of Ontario will end daylight saving time Sunday by turning clocks back one hour, while parts of northwestern Ontario keep daylight time starting Nov. 1.
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Most of Ontario will turn clocks back one hour this Sunday, marking the end of daylight saving time, but some regions of northwestern Ontario will not.
The parts of the province that remain on daylight time are in the central time zone and are west of the 90th meridian, a north-south longitude line that crosses through northwestern Ontario.
Ontario’s government has said it wants all of the province to stop changing clocks twice a year. In 2020, the province passed the Time Amendment Act, which would eliminate the biannual time change.
However, the change would not apply across all of Ontario unless Quebec and New York also make the switch, according to a news release from Ontario’s attorney general. The province said it is important the jurisdictions stay aligned for synchronicity involving trade, the stock market and broadcasting.
Ontario’s timeline is tied to decisions by trading partners. Patrick Baylis, an associate professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, said governments should wait until trading partners act, adding there is “no first-mover advantage to changing time before everybody else does.”
Manitoba is among other jurisdictions that have already stopped switching between daylight and standard time, following decisions made earlier in B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
Quebec is scheduled to turn clocks back this weekend, but its newly elected Parti Québécois government said it plans to end the time change soon. Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said in a Facebook post: “This is probably the last year we’ll be imposing such unnecessary constraints on ourselves.”
In New York, Republican Sen. Joe Griffo sponsored senate bill S3380 to set daylight saving time as the standard time in the state year-round. Griffo said the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the bill, but further action from the senate is still required.
Corrections were issued to earlier reporting: only parts of northwestern Ontario are switching to permanent daylight time, and Ontario is already divided into two time zones, with most on eastern time and a portion on central time.
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