Alberta's permanent time shift will wreak havoc on booking systems come November

When Alberta keeps year-round daylight time on Nov. 1 and clocks don't fall back an hour, the province's booking systems, flight schedules and airport departure boards will face a digital reckoning unless software vendors and businesses patch their systems in time.

Jordan Janovcik, a Calgary hairstylist, discovered the problem firsthand. When he tried to book a client appointment for November, his usual 11 a.m. start time had been pushed to noon by his online booking system — which still expected the seasonal clock change. All of his prebooked appointments from November through March have been bumped back an hour. His salon books eight months in advance, and Janovcik estimates 8 out of 10 of his clients have had their appointment times altered.

"I was trying to get a client in in November and I noticed, why is my start time an hour later?" Janovcik said. "I was freaking out about this. I started digging into it and I'm realizing it's because we're not having a time change, but the computer thinks we are."

The problem extends across Alberta's business community. Other owners have told Janovcik they're wrestling with the same glitches. Deborah Yedlin, CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, likened the situation to Y2K concerns at the turn of the century. "Back in 2000, we were all worried that everything wasn't going to work," Yedlin said. "So we're going to have to make sure that whatever programming adjustments have to be made to the specific calendars are going to have to be done in advance of this."

Hazel Campbell, who teaches computer software at the University of Alberta, said disruptions are inevitable when systems aren't fully prepared. Flight booking schedules and airport departure boards could show times off by an hour on Nov. 1 if updates lag or bugs emerge. "I would say that this kind of situation is to be expected anytime there's a change like this," Campbell said. The province passed the Official Time Act in June to keep Alberta on year-round daylight time, but the digital infrastructure built on the old assumption — a clock change every autumn — hasn't caught up.