Letter to the editor — Survey aims for specific result

I noted with bemusement the Winnipeg Free Press/Brandon Sun editorial comment (“Time-change survey tilts a particular way,” May 29) that the EngageMB survey was crafted to have “eight fingers on the keyboard and both thumbs on the scale” of public opinion.

The critique is both clever and valid, but much too gentle for what is actually transpiring. The drafters of the survey have no less than a ham-hand firmly mashed on the scale, employing a mix of shaming and condescension to engineer a particular result, i.e., an end to bi-annual time changes and a reversion to-year round Central Standard Time.

The first problem with the survey is that it doesn’t appear to limit the number of times it can be accessed. This opens it to be skewed by either bots or highly motivated individuals taking the survey multiple times to express their point of view. As a tool of measurement, this immediately disqualifies the survey as a scientifically reliable mechanism for ascertaining the views of Manitobans.

Secondly, while notionally trying to “educate” the survey taker, the survey questions are clearly framed to emotionally steer the responder to answer a particular way. To answer question 3, as an example, your four options are to acknowledge that you know seasonal time changes cause (1) strokes, (2) obesity, (3) injuries and traffic accidents, or (4) that you were unaware of these impacts. In conjunction with the next question, the first option of which is to acknowledge that you already knew about these effects, and then goes on to ask how this information affects your decision and answer.

These two questions are absurd in their premise, construction and subtext. What kind of “analysis by Manitoba Health” has come to those conclusions? Am I obese because every first weekend in March my clock shifts forward an hour? No medical doctor, health or self-described sleep expert could look at the data and come to that conclusion.

Were that in fact correct, ignoring a myriad of complex inter-related lifestyle, physiological, genetic, environmental and social stroke and obesity causing factors, to name but a few, wouldn’t Saskatchewan residents, having not changed their clocks for decades, being demonstrably thinner and healthier than Manitobans? It is, after all, a virtually identical demographic, with similar ethnic makeup, population distribution, climate and geography to our own.

Spoiler alert: the data and evidence does NOT bear out what is asserted in that question.

And yet the combination of questions 3 and 4 require the responder to make a choice. Either admit one’s own ignorance and change your opinion, or acknowledge that you knew that time changes and daylight saving time makes people fat, causes strokes and accidents, and you still want to change your clocks and/or go to permanent daylight savings time.

Question 6 doubles down on the shaming tactic, asking the responder to rank a number of priorities, including having longer evening daylight. The thinly veiled implication of the options presented would suggest that either you value your safety and a good’s night sleep over longer daylight evenings, or you are a sociopathic monster.

Finally, those advocating for permanent standard time, such as I fear Premier Wab Kinew is, would have us in the same time zone as Alberta (technically the Mountain time zone) and Saskatchewan. I suggest that they look at a map. Such a decision would put eastern Manitoba communities in the same time zone as Golden and Cranbrook, B.C., which are on the western edge of the Mountain Time zone.

In the “nicer” months of April, May, August, September and October, those B.C. and western Albertan communities would get fully two more hours of usable and enjoyable early evening light, whereas Falcon Lake would be bright and cheery at the unusable time of 4:30 to 5 a.m., but dark at 6:30 to 7 in the evening. I can not imagine anything S.A.D.der.

RON TOEWS

Brandon