Now wait just a second (or an hour)

This feels like one of those times.

You know the uneasy feeling you get when you’re uncertain whether something is a good idea, a bad idea or a really, really terrible idea, but the one thing you do know for sure is that the people in charge haven’t thought it all the way through?

When it comes to the issue of time in Manitoba, this most definitely feels like one of those times.

Effective Nov. 1, this province abandoned the long-observed ritual of changing the clocks twice each year — an hour forward in the spring and an hour back in the fall — to make the shift between standard time and daylight time.

The decision to instead adopt daylight time as Manitoba’s permanent clock setting was announced in September by Premier Wab Kinew, purportedly in response to a survey that sought residents’ input on the notion of quitting the spring-forward/fall-back routine and adopting either standard or daylight time as our year-round option.

“We heard from Manitobans loud and clear — no more changing the clocks in Manitoba,” said Kinew, citing the aforementioned survey, in which 92 per cent of respondents favoured an end to seasonal time changes. “Permanent daylight saving time is good for our health, good for business and good for parents.”

Emphatic though the premier’s statement may have been, there remain serious questions about how clearly Manitobans actually spoke on this issue and whether permanent daylight time really is as beneficial as the province insists. (Russia, for instance, reverted to standard time in 2014 after a three-year experiment with daylight time.)

In truth, about 72,000 people (fewer than five per cent of a population of 1.5 million) filled out a survey whose questions were worded in a manner that made it clear the government had already made up its mind and was merely seeking a justification for what it intended to do.

Now that permanent daylight time has arrived, Manitobans are confronting — on a daily and even hourly basis — the ramifications of the rammed-through realignment. Among the revelations that await is the fact youngsters will soon be making the morning trek to school in complete darkness — which doesn’t sound all that “good for parents” — as sunrise in winter doesn’t arrive until well after 9 a.m.

School division officials have already received complaints from parents about school-travel safety concerns created by the daylight-time decision.

“This was a shoot-from-the-hip reaction from the premier without much thought about how this would all roll out,” said one teacher at a northwest Winnipeg school.

As the shift into awkwardly named “Manitoba time” (MBT) continues, people have been left scrambling to confirm or correct appointment times as the various automated mechanisms for addressing seasonal time changes (or the lack thereof) have been inconsistently applied.

There are also lifestyle disruptions to be considered — for instance, that shifting Manitoba into what’s essentially eastern time for half the year brings a jarring realignment of familiar TV-viewing schedules.

For most Manitobans’ entire lives, “prime time” meant between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.; now everything on the schedule appears an hour later (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.), and the upending of viewing habits also extends to popular morning programs and late-night talk shows that have now been pushed into the very late-night hours.

Kinew was quick to proclaim the benefits of permanent daylight time, but the current reality suggests very little thought was given to the detrimental impacts.

It’s entirely possible many Manitobans will conclude this change they were told they needed is actually something they don’t really want. Might that force the Kinew government to apply some sober second thought to its hastily hatched clock-zone realignment?

Fittingly, only time will tell.

» Winnipeg Free Press