Iqaluit council says no to time zone change

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Iqaluit Town Council has decided to oppose the Nunavut government’s creation of a single time zone for Nunavut.

Councillors passed a motion opposing the change at a council meeting Tuesday night. The motion directs Town staff to write a letter to Premier Paul Okalik expressing their opposition to the idea, and another letter to other communities in the Baffin region asking for comments on how the change will affect them.

The motion came from councillor John Matthews and was seconded by councillor Matthew Spence.

The night before, councillors sitting on the town’s finance, legislation, administration and community services committee peppered Iqaluit East MLA Ed Picco with questions about Nunavut’s decision to bring the Kitikmeot and Baffin regions into the same time zone as the Keewatin on Oct. 31.

Council also received a letter from the Iqaluit Chamber of Commerce informing them that a questionnaire will go out to local businesses asking them about how the time zone change will affect them.

“It’s a difference of 60 minutes,” Picco told the committee, stressing that Baffin is moving back one hour in October because of the normal move from daylight savings time to standard time, and one hour to bring the region into the central time zone.

But Town staff members and members of the public confronted Picco on the meeting’s coffee break.

“We already should be in the same time zone as the Maritimes,” said one woman, pointing out that, for the most part, the Baffin region is on the same longitude as the Maritime provinces.

Picco argued that the time zone change will make little difference in the lives of most Baffin residents. “Is it going to affect you?” he asked.

Iqaluit’s deputy mayor, Ben Ell, questioned why the decision was made at all when the previous GNWT government never made any move to impose a uniform time zone.

“This seems to me to be a very frivolous decision. The hunters go out every morning using the sun and it does not lie.”

Ell said that he had always simply accepted that there were different time zones and that calls to Yellowknife or other regions had to be made at certain times.

Picco said the move was designed to keep communities in the West from feeling alienated, and that it’s to head off complaints that Iqaluit is another Yellowknife.

“It’s designed to break down some of those artificial barriers,” Picco said.