Everyone who likes the time change in March, step forward.

OK, two of you.

Despite research that consistently shows that traffic accidents increase, productivity declines, adolescents do not adjust well, and most people hate the process, every year we 'spring forward.' And every year, we 'fall back' as the time changes.

While the good ol' days of having janitors on ladders laboriously changing the face of clocks in city hall meeting rooms have long passed, there is still a cost to municipalities.

What is generally not known is that the time change is a provincial/territorial responsibility. It is not a federal obligation.

Saskatchewan for many years has remained on Central Standard Time. I grew up with that system. It seemed to work just fine.

Yukon decided in 2020 to stay on Mountain Standard Time. In the US, Arizona and Hawaii, plus several island territories, do not change their clocks.

Admittedly, it is difficult for Canada to go on a different time system than in the United States, just because of scheduling conflicts—airlines, stock markets, television programs, and so on. There has been a bill floating around Congress for years that would eliminate the time change, but, as usual, Congress dithers and seems unable to pass even the simplest of motions.

This leaves Canadian towns and cities stuck. Some city councils have passed their own motions recommending that the time change be eliminated. There has not been much response.

Time zones in Canada are a vast concept because of our immense width as a nation. Newfoundland and Labrador have their own unique 30-minute zone because of geographic realities, which of course led to the old joke: "The world will end tonight at 8pm, 8:30 in Newfoundland."

What is not so funny to municipal leaders is the residue on their community that the time change leaves. Students have more difficulty learning in the early hours of the day. Traffic accidents increase right after the time change. Crime increases. People are usually a little snarly as their sleep patterns are disrupted. Employees spend some extra time bitching about how they feel, so productivity declines.

Surveys indicate growing support for dumping the time change. Like many, I am agnostic about keeping it on either daylight savings time or standard time. But the body of evidence is that the time change, which began in the First World War as an energy-conservation scheme, is not good for our bodies. Or minds. Or communities.