For Nunavut’s premier, time is a toxic substance

Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik will deal with the daylight savings time issue the way Superman deals with a piece of green kryptonite.

“I am not touching it. We are not going near it,” Okalik said last week from Banff, Alberta, where he attended the annual meeting of Canada’s provincial and territorial premiers.

Though it wasn’t on their formal agenda, some premiers talked informally last week about the idea of Canadian provinces and territories adopting a longer period of daylight savings time, to remain in step with the U.S., where it will be extended by one month.

Most Canadian provinces and territories, including Nunavut, use the daylight savings time system that, until now, the U.S. has used.

But in 2007, U.S. residents will move their clocks forward by one hour in March, three weeks earlier than they do now. In the fall, they’ll move their clocks back by one hour in November, one week later than they do now.

The move, which gives people an extra hour of daylight in the evenings for a longer period, is aimed at saving energy.

Many politicians and business leaders in large border provinces like Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba are suggesting that Canada should follow the U.S. lead.

The Globe and Mail newspaper, for example, last week reported Gary Doer, the premier of Manitoba, as saying that Canadians would be “crazy” not to follow the U.S. example.

But when Okalik last tried to mess around with time, it blew up in his face.

In the fall of 1999, he and other GN officials tried to fold Nunavut’s three time zones into a single time zone for all of Nunavut. Their aim was to make it easier for residents in all regions to communicate with one another, and to unify the territory’s far-flung communities.

To create one time zone, the GN declared that Baffin communities in the Eastern time zone and Kitikmeot communities in the Mountain time zone would, from then on, join the Central time zone – an adjustment of one hour for each region.

For Kivalliq residents, nothing changed. Their region has always sat inside the Central time zone.

Though the idea had been endorsed by all MLAs in the 1999 Bathurst Mandate, by a meeting of all Nunavut mayors, and by delegates at an NTI annual general meeting, the GN’s well-intentioned plan to unify Nunavut sank into chaos.

Though Kitikmeot and Kivalliq residents liked the new scheme, most Baffin residents hated it and complained incessantly, bombarding the government with demands to go back to the old system.

That’s likely because the new regime came into effect Oct. 31, 1999, the day when most North Americans turn their clocks back one hour anyway to move from daylight to standard time.

In Baffin, this meant residents had to turn their clocks back two hours on the night of Oct. 31 to reach Central standard time. The next day, they experienced two extra hours of daylight in the morning, and two extra hours of darkness in the afternoon.

Hamlet councils in Clyde River, Pangnirtung and Sanikiluaq refused to recognize the new time scheme. In those communities, federal and territorial government offices operated in the new time zone, while everyone else stayed in the old one.

And in the legislative assembly, some MLAs staged a walkout to protest the unified time zone.

A year later, in an effort to appease disgruntled Baffin residents, GN officials decided the entire territory would switch to eastern time for the winter of 2000-2001.

That move made Baffin residents happy, but Nunavut’s westernmost communities, Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay, content until then with one time zone, rose up against the GN’s ham-fisted tinkering.

The two hamlets refused to set their clocks to territorial time, and were given permission to stay on Central time throughout the year.

As of April 1, 2001, GN officials beat an undignified retreat and declared Nunavut would move back to the three time zones.

Once-bitten, twice-shy – Okalik will now steer clear of any plan to extend the length of daylight savings time in the territory.

“I made a commitment that I would not touch the time again,” Okalik said.