Toronto’s winter sunrise would slip from 7:51 a.m. on permanent standard time to 8:51 a.m. on permanent daylight saving time, according to a Canadian Medical Association Journal analysis published October 5, 2026. Calgary’s would move from 8:40 a.m. to 9:40 a.m. Four Canadian authors use that hour of lost morning light as the core of an argument: if Canada is going to stop changing its clocks, they say, it should stop on standard time.
The analysis is a position, not a trial result. It reviews existing evidence on sleep, circadian biology and mood and then recommends a policy. The authors are Raymond Lam, an MD in the University of British Columbia’s psychiatry department, Ralph Mistlberger, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser University, UBC economist Patrick Baylis and Alexandra Choi of Vancouver Coastal Health.
Authors and their argument
The CMAJ analysis, listed in volume 198, issue 34, says permanent daylight saving time “prolongs darkness on winter mornings, with potential adverse effects on circadian alignment, sleep, mood, education, and productivity.” It adds that the change would negatively affect sleep and mental health in winter. The authors write that “major sleep and chronobiology societies have all called for abolishing the time change and implementing” permanent standard time.
Lam and Choi are physicians; Mistlberger and Baylis hold doctorates in psychology and economics. The journal ran the piece as an analysis article, which carries the authors’ interpretation, not the Canadian Medical Association’s policy.
Light timing is the mechanism. Morning light synchronizes the internal clock to the 24-hour day, and a clock that sits an hour later makes winter wakeups come before dawn for more of the year. The authors describe the result as a form of social jet lag, the gap between biological time and the schedule school and work impose. They identify adolescents, whose body clocks naturally run later during puberty, as especially exposed, along with shift workers and lower-income people commuting in the dark. For jurisdictions that go ahead with permanent daylight time anyway, Sci.News reports, the authors suggest enhanced street lighting, traffic-safety measures, flexible work schedules and clinical monitoring of sleep and mood disorders, and they pair standard time with blackout curtains and sleep-health education.
Sunrise arithmetic for Toronto and Calgary
Sci.News’s report on the analysis gives the city figures: “In cities such as Toronto, for example, the latest winter sunrise would occur at 8:51 a.m., compared with 7:51 a.m. under permanent standard time.” Calgary is paired at 9:40 a.m. against 8:40 a.m. Those are winter extremes for two cities, not a national average, and the CMAJ page itself does not print the Toronto times in the text reviewed here.
The authors also cite seasonal affective disorder, which they write affects an estimated 1 to 3 percent of people in Canada as winter depression, with as many as 15 percent experiencing milder seasonal changes in mood. They note that prevalence rises toward the north, which is why they treat a later winter dawn as a bigger problem at Canadian latitudes. Sci.News, summarizing the analysis, adds that poor sleep, low energy and impaired concentration are particularly prominent among adolescents.
On the economics, the analysis cites one study finding that an hour of later sunset reduces weekly sleep by nearly an hour and long-run earnings by about 5 percent, and argues that sleep-deprivation losses outweigh the leisure and commerce value of evening light. Russia dropped permanent daylight time in 2014 and Chile reversed its 2015 policy, the authors point out, both after public complaints about dark winter mornings.
Provinces already on the clock
The argument arrives after several provinces have moved the other way. A May 2026 British Columbia Medical Journal editorial by Michael Schwandt notes British Columbia’s March 2026 decision to adopt permanent daylight saving time and says many sleep experts recommend standard time instead; he writes that Vancouver would see sunrise after 8 a.m. for nearly four months of winter, that the extra evening hour comes with an extra hour of morning darkness, and that the health trade-offs of the choice should be monitored. The CMAJ authors say Yukon went first in 2020 and that Alberta and the Northwest Territories followed British Columbia a month later.
The picture varies by source. The Canada West Foundation’s explainer on provincial time says British Columbia adopted permanent Pacific Daylight Time in March 2026, describes Alberta’s change as starting in November 2026, and notes that Saskatchewan has kept central standard time year-round since 1966 and that Ontario’s 2022 law ending clock changes depends on Quebec and New York State acting.
Lam made the same case in 2022 to UBC’s Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, calling the mismatch between sunrise and the internal clock “a form of jet lag.”
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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