This sounds much more like the reason. 12pm-3pm, plus some time before and after to prep and commute and stuff, plus these things often run long in my experience… It easily becomes most of the afternoon. If you have anything else you need to do that day it becomes a fairly big deal.
What makes Alberta the most unfriendly? Like, I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t recall any major differences between the recent legislation in any of those three provinces.