Debates of February 27, 2024 (day 11)
Question 116-20(1): Daylight Savings Time
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to my colleagues. I've realized I've been too serious these days, so this is a little bit of fun for everyone.
The Minister of Justice released the daylight savings What We Heard report in 2023, early 2023, Mr. Speaker. We're sitting here a year later. So will the current Minister of Justice commit to moving the territory to permanent time in the life of the 20th Assembly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Minister of Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No one would like that more than me. I was really pushing for this in the last government. Unfortunately I can't make that commitment. There's a variety of reasons. It is unfortunately a much more labour intensive and much more complicated task than people might expect. There is not one entity that you go to and say, I want to get off daylight savings time; I want to stick with a permanent time. We have to reach out to, you know, Microsoft, Apple, Google, a number of these different companies. So maybe I can leave it at that. The Member might have more questions; I don't want to spoil all the fun at once. Thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I sure hope we can have fun for the next three and a half years.
Mr. Speaker, I understand it's technically a difficult ask. I understand that the Yukon had a bit of a difficult job implementing as well. So what I guess I would ask the Minister today is if he can't commit to full implementation happening in the 20th, can he at least look into what steps need to happen to get us there, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Member referenced the Yukon and, of course, the Yukon got rid of the time change a couple years ago. They intended to piggyback off British Columbia who announced that they were going to do the same. It turns out that they didn't go through with it but the Yukon had already committed themselves and so they had to go through it, and it showed the difficulties of a small jurisdiction in making that a reality. And so some of the things that I heard and they actually released a report that's quite interesting, you know, you had staff from the Yukon government on the phone with, you know, the 1800 customer service number to companies like Microsoft trying to make this happen. So unless we have a big jurisdiction who is sort of leading the way and getting the attention of these companies, it is quite difficult and quite resource intensive. You know, I've been preaching about living within our means and ensuring that we are at least providing the basics before we do anything else. So the thing that needs to happen is Alberta needs to get on board. I know that they had a referendum and there wasn't clear support for getting rid of time change unlike here where I think it was 80 some percent, the biggest survey response in the history of the territory. But hopefully that happens. There has been some work done already to see what we would need to do, a number of technical changes. We've been engaging with officials from the Yukon to learn about the steps they had to take. So a lot of that work has already happened. I can share some information with the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that. So what I'm hearing is some work has occurred and he's willing to share that work with Members. That's fantastic. Can that work that is scoped include timelines from when Alberta drops the gauntlet to what it would look like here and in terms of how long it would take us to catch up with Alberta? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That might be a bit much. I'm not quite sure that we can provide that level of detail. We don't quite know what it would take. We would likely piggyback with Alberta and, you know, make the changes at the same time. So while Alberta is contacting the airlines saying that they're getting rid of their time change, we could be part of those conversations. That would be my hope. So I'll see what we can what information we can put together, but I don't think it's going to be the level of detail to perhaps satisfy the Member. Thank you.
Final supplementary. Member from Great Slave.
Mr. Speaker, I thought today was supposed to be fun. I can recognize that I might be coming across requesting a level of detail. I just want to have a general picture, Mr. Speaker, of how long implementation may occur in maybe months or years, Mr. Speaker; is that a possibility? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have some reports, I have a briefing note, so we can put together the information from what we have and share it with the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Justice. Oral questions. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.