By Sumayya

OTTAWA – There is more confusion and a restarted debate over the seasonal time change as millions of Canadians prepare to turn the clocks back while some provinces drop the move completely.

On November 1, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories will no longer turn their clocks back one hour, choosing instead to stay on daylight time forever. Most of Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada will still change their clocks, though parts of northwestern Ontario, including Kenora, will not, so that the area can match up with neighboring Manitoba.

“The Canadian time landscape is a real mess right now, I cannot even keep up with it,” said Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a biology professor at York University.

“We desperately need some kind of organization to try to come up with something more systematic than this patchwork approach.” As of November 1, when it is noon in Toronto, it will be 10 a.m. in Vancouver. Alberta will now be only one hour behind most of Ontario.

Some experts argue the twice-a-year change can be bad for your health and that moving to permanent standard time is the best path to take.

Lakin-Thomas said that is especially true when considering the sunrise in Calgary on some mornings this winter will not happen until 9:30 a.m. “You are going to find it very hard and you are going to feel and be essentially jet-lagged,”

she said. At Kaya’s Watch and Clock Shop in Ottawa, Mustafa Kaya uses the twice-a-year time change as a reminder to swap out the batteries in the dozens of clocks in his store.

“The time change is a good time for me to go over all the clocks and make sure they are in sync again,” Kaya said. “Keeping it consistent would be huge, especially for a business like us.” Ontario has stated it would end the twice-a-year switch, but only if Quebec and New York do the same thing as well.