On Tue, 22 Sept 2026 at 18:40, Nicholas Fitzpatrick <[email protected]> wrote:
> Under Ontario’s Municipal Act, the Mayor or a majority of councillors can > call a special council meeting. It’s normally 24-hours notice, but the > notice period varies by municipality. Special meetings usually happen for > labour or contracting issues. > > Given though how controversial the decision could be, I’d have been > surprised if they’d want to open that can of worms. Digging deeper though, > the mayor has already been acclaimed (no opponent) and council uses an > at-large system, so perhaps it would be a lot easier to pass than it would > be in many municipalities. > Yes, there is usually a mechanism for an emergency meeting. Far less clear is whether this sort of thing rises to that level, especially given the timing with the elections, as you say. And since several jurisdictions already do their own thing with clocks without much (any?) official sanction anyway, it's even less clear which will go through with such process. The Township of Ignace, in southwestern Kenora District about 75 crow-km north of Atikokan, convened one such special council meeting on the topic on Monday 21 September. For what it's worth, it appears their main recommendation was to encourage the provincial government to handle the Central Time areas as a whole: https://ignace.civicweb.net/Portal/MeetingInformation.aspx?Org=Cal&id=270 https://ignace.civicweb.net/document/35089/URGENT_%20Impact%20of%20Manitoba_s%20decision%20to%20stay%20o.pd?handleC70297125F2241148D5F949C40BB74BC And the current *Time Act*, RSO 1990, c. T.9, would appear to allow such a provincial regulation. Absent provincial action, though — between so many municipal governments, First Nations, and unorganized regions; and with every chance that *de facto* practice may not wait for *de jure* implementation — in the meantime, this is basically the definition of a "fluid boundary" that theory.html advises us not to bother tracking too, too closely. America/Winnipeg will stay on year-round UTC−5 in the next release. We expect America/Chicago will retain traditional Central Time (−6/−5) and America/Toronto traditional Eastern Time (−5/−4). Regions in northwestern Ontario should be able to have their pick from those to handle any of their most likely timekeeping needs until the resulting boundaries become clearer. In the meantime, I'll add Ontario OiCs to my list of things to check regularly. -- Tim Parenti
