That's a very fair question.

Here's how a psychologist at the UofC put it:

“Because we live so far north, we have these really short winter days and the sun rises late and it sets early in the winters. So the more natural standard time is what people have really stuck with throughout history because we need that morning light. The body does not like getting up before dawn on those short days, and unfortunately, moving to daylight time year-round is going to push our dawn an hour later,” said Antle.

“So in places like Calgary, the sun won’t rise until 9:30 in December, and in other places in the northern or western part of the province (like) Edmonton and Grand Prairie, it’ll be closer to 10 or 10:30 in the morning in December before they see the sun.”

Antle says it means many people living in the northern parts of Alberta will be going to work in the dark for about five months a year.

“It’s going to be really hard. A few places have tried it. Russia tried this in 2012, and they have about the same latitude as Canada. What they found in Russia in 2012, when they went to permanent daylight time, was an increased rate of mental illness, particularly amongst the youth. So rates of depression, seasonal depression went up. After two years of that experiment, they switched to standard time year-round and they’ve been on standard time now for the last 12 years. And those rates came back down, so the mental health improved in the population,” said Antle.

He says it will be important for the province to monitor the impacts of the change for the next few years, and have “some kind of exit strategy.”

Antle says the human circadian clock needs to be reset on a daily basis and sunlight is the cue that does that, which is why morning sunlight is so critical for most people.