On Thu, 17 Sept 2026 at 14:46, Tim Parenti <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Sept 2026 at 14:30, James Bellaire <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 9/17/2026 2:06 PM, Tim Parenti via tz wrote: >> >> While other options may have required legislative action, it appears the >> *Official >> Time Amendment Act*, assented to 30 May 2023, allows for this, but I am >> still seeking confirmation on whether that is indeed the mechanism that >> will be used. >> >> I agree with that position. They left the legislation at the "Royal >> Assent" stage similar to British Columbia and Northwest Territories. The >> more recent legislative efforts were to change the law to take effect on a >> specific date instead of waiting for proclamation. All Manitoba needs to >> proceed is a proclamation. >> >> Here's the legislative text: > https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/2023/pdf/c00423.pdf > I called Manitoba Government Inquiry earlier this afternoon and the staffer who took my call confirmed that, while it was his understanding that this would indeed be the regulatory mechanism, he could not see any record of the proclamation bringing the Act into force having yet been made. Certainly nothing is yet public on the province's list of Orders In Council: https://oic.gov.mb.ca/oic/ I followed up via email about an hour later in the hopes that, over the coming days, we will be able to obtain some of the relevant details from government staffers responsible for overseeing and implementing the change, in much the same way as Paul and I have recently been in private contact with staffers at the provincial/territorial and regional levels elsewhere in Canada. The original announcement was made during a morning radio interview, and the staffer who took my call did not seem to have any indication of which ministry would be responsible for this file, so it is quite possible that this is still in fairly early stages (!!!) All of this is to say, because Manitoba's planned divergence from its past practice occurs in ~6 weeks, we are likely to see downstream propagation impacts anyway, regardless of when we end up cutting our next release. Since it can take a few days for the implications of such announcements to settle in and reaction from the public and neighboring jurisdictions to become clear, it is probably worth a (short) wait for some further information-gathering before moving ahead with adding this change to our data. it's quite possible that Manitoba's decision will indeed have ripple > effects into central and eastern Canada. > > https://www.ola.org/sites/default/files/node-files/bill/document/pdf/2020/2020-11/b214ra_e.pdf A closer read of Ontario's legislation reminds me that, if and when activated, it applies to both the traditional "eastern time" and "central time" portions of the province. There does not seem to be a provision for only applying the change to just one portion or the other, as might be helpful to avoid potential awkwardness in much of the Kenora District while keeping, say, Toronto and New York aligned. Of course, something entirely different could always be legislated instead, but Ontario's Legislative Assembly is not scheduled to be in session until 27 October. Just when our long-extended March "silly season" had finally started to > calm down a bit… the September one picks right up where it left off. ;) You can see a map of the potentially-confusing winter zones, and how they compare to the summer zones, in this CBC article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/daylight-time-manitoba-9.7347844 It highlights how Manitoba's timekeeping will stick out from its neighbo(u)rs come November if nothing else changes. While staying on UTC−5, it will be flanked by Nunavut's Kivalliq region to the north (falling back to UTC−6), Northwest Territories across Canada's Four Corners to the northwest (newly year-round UTC−6), Saskatchewan to the west (long-time year-round UTC−6), North Dakota and Minnesota to the south (both falling back to UTC−6), and much of Ontario's Kenora District to the east (also falling back to UTC−6). Only a small ~93-km portion of Manitoba's northeastern provincial boundary with Ontario, starting at Hudson Bay and continuing southwest through a not-very-populated area, would connect Manitoba's UTC−5 contiguously with Ontario's UTC−5 over the 19-week winter period. Worth noting that the new Act we expect will formalize this change states that "[w]hen recommending that the reckoning of Manitoba Standard Time be varied, the minister must have due regard for the applicable time zone in neighbouring jurisdictions." One last data point… I had written back in July how the National Hockey League (NHL) adapted its 2026–27 schedule to accommodate the timekeeping changes in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver: https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/7QR6OHBLMYEGQG4PZRFDXMYTHVOKPXHC/ Now, with the regular season starting in less than two weeks on 29 September, they are having to make similar adjustments for the Winnipeg Jets. By the end of Thursday, they had already added a "Central Time (Manitoba)" option to their dropdown, using CDT throughout the season, and applying the same to the "Venue Game Time" for home Jets games. Moments ago (Friday afternoon), the league announced adjusted local start times for 12 home games during the affected winter period — for each, the scheduled UTC instant for the puck drop has not changed, but it will occur an hour later than originally announced according to clocks in Winnipeg: https://www.nhl.com/jets/news/start-time-updates-for-12-winnipeg-jets-home-games No announcement was made for the other 17 home Jets games during that period, though at time of writing, the online calendar is also showing their local start times similarly adjusted to keep their actual start times as they were originally planned relative to the rest of the league schedule. Start times for the (apparently more manually-managed) promotional schedule have not yet been updated. As there a lot of dollars riding on those arrangements now that they've been made, perhaps that reaction is a sign of how likely the NHL thinks that Ontario, the rest of eastern Canada, and/or the US are (or are not!) to end up joining in the recent "permanent DST" frenzy before this November. Whether they end up being right, of course, is perhaps another matter entirely. -- Tim Parenti
