HUH?? Did I miss the meetings?
call HART crazy … but
“We’ve been doing a very wide consultation across the province since August and the overwhelming response has been that, because our economies are so interlinked, that we have to be on the same clock schedule,” Zimmer told CTV.ca.
Ontario spends a month of survey and Manitobans must now suffer our TiVo recording scheduling times? (Actually – I do not have TiVo)
I personally stay out of political conversations, because I think the people deserve what they get. For instance, people who voted for Paul Martin (NOT ME) shouldn’t complain how the country’s being -ruined- governed.
However – I believe I can say, with a degree of certainty, that the people surveyed in Ontario .. did not vote for our Manitoba Premier Gary Doer .
With all the M.T.S. and Cell Phone surveys that I must have been receiving .. and up to as late as 9:00pm I might add .. why wouldn’t the province just do a survey with their own kin?
HART
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CTV.ca | Ontario, Manitoba to extend daylight time in 2007
Thu. Oct. 20 2005 11:33 PM ET
Ontario, Manitoba to extend daylight time in 2007
CTV.ca News Staff
That perennial harbinger of winter — the rollback of the clock that signals the inevitable onset of winter — will soon be delayed, in Ontario and Manitoba at least.
Eager to realize the energy savings associated with extending daylight hours during the winter months, U.S. President George Bush signed the changes into law south of the border last August.
Now, after months of examining the options for Canadian clocks, Ontario announced it will become the first province to synchronize with the United States.
Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant said Thursday that his province will follow the U.S. plan to extend so-called ‘daylight saving time’ starting in 2007.
“Making this change will allow us to maintain Ontario’s competitive advantage by co-ordinating the time change with Ontario’s biggest trading partner,” Bryant said, adding that the change, “will improve the lives of Ontarians.”
Manitoba followed in Ontario’s footsteps later Thursday by also adopting extended daylight hours.
It’s important for trucking and other industries to keep the same time as other jurisdictions, Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said.
As of 2007, clocks in Ontario and Manitoba will spring ahead four weeks earlier — on the second Saturday in March, to be precise — and then fall back on the first Sunday in November.
That means commuters, for example, can look forward to seeing the sun a little while longer on their way home during the autumn.
And, the later daylight hours should give the illusion of an early end to winter.
But, as advocates of the revamped schedule argue, daylight time is about more than time in the sun. It’s about saving energy, reducing traffic accidents and even curbing crime.
The bottom line, however — considering that nearly everything from TV timetables to air traffic in Canada’s industrial heartland works in close co-ordination with U.S. deadlines — is simplicity.
“To not be on the same time schedule, or to change at different times, would be confusing for people,” Glen Grunwald told CTV News, pointing out the logistical challenges of meshing schedules with Americans.
Not everyone sees the extra daylight hours as a blessing, though.
When CTV took the plan to the street, opinion was clearly divided.
“I prefer to have a.m. light than evening light,” one person said, while another lamented the looming loss of those famously dark winter evenings.
“I really enjoy when it gets dark early, you get to bundle up,” she said. “I enjoy winter.”
And for those who might dismiss the change as merely kowtowing to the Americans, Parliamentary Assistant to Ontario’s Attorney General says they should shelve such anti-American sentiment.
David Zimmer said it’s important for Ontarians to realize that the move is not just to blindly follow the Americans, and he urged people to put away their anti-American sentiment.
“We’ve been doing a very wide consultation across the province since August and the overwhelming response has been that, because our economies are so interlinked, that we have to be on the same clock schedule,” Zimmer told CTV.ca.
For his part, Bryant said everyone consulted about the change was overwhelmingly “in favour of remaining in sync with the United States.”
“Businesses told us that any misalignment could have a very real and negative impact namely, trade disruption as well cost, coordination, delivery system, supply chain and border pressures,” he said.
Ontario Conservative MPP Bob Runciman said his party agrees with the decision, but wondered why the government couldn’t delay the announcement until after the clock is rolled back at the end of this month.
Runciman said many rural Ontarians are concerned about how this will affect their lives and those of their children.
“Families that have to send their kids out in pitch dark to wait for a school bus, that is a concern,” he said.
Ontario New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton was more generous in his reaction, insisting the change won’t pose a problem for rural children used to travelling between home and school in the dark.
“It makes sense, because where you do have available hours of daylight you should try to use them,” Hampton told reporters. “That’s all this does.”
According to reports earlier this week, Quebec may soon follow Ontario’s lead. Officials in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia have also said they will seriously consider making the change.
© 2005 Bell Globemedia Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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