Abstract

The problem of time is widely regarded as one of the deepest conceptual challenges in quantum gravity. In canonical approaches, the absence of an external time parameter, most notably in the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, has been taken to imply a fundamentally timeless ontology. This paper argues that this inference is not forced by the formalism itself but arises from a specific interpretive move: the elevation of spacetime geometry from a representational structure to an ontological ground. Drawing on Temporal Rate Ontology, which treats ordered temporal succession as ontologically primitive while interpreting geometric structure as representational, the paper proposes that the problem of time should be dissolved rather than solved. Once the interpretive slide from encoding to grounding is resisted, the lack of a time variable in canonical quantum gravity no longer compels a timeless metaphysics. The paper does not offer a new physical theory or technical solution; it provides a diagnostic and interpretive reframing that clarifies which aspects of the problem of time are genuinely physical and which are artifacts of ontological overcommitment.