Time has run out for Premier John Horgan’s quest to get rid of seasonal time changes.
With the clocks set to move back one hour on Sunday, Horgan came up short of moving the province to permanent Daylight Saving Time.
On numerous occasions, the premier has attempted to work with politicians all along the west coast of the United States to get rid of the archaic twice-annual clock-switching practice.
The outgoing premier went as far as to make one final pitch a few weeks ago to the governors of California, Oregon and Washington, but was rebuffed.
“The four of us signed an agreement called the Cascadia Corridor and after we did all that signing I flipped it over and said ‘before we go let’s all agree that this is the last time we not change the clocks back,'” Horgan said in an interview with Global News.
“And all of them, good people, said they need congressional approval from Washington, D.C. I had the pen, I had the paper, and they said, ‘Look at the time, I have got to go.’ I tried. But I couldn’t get them to sign on the dotted line.”
Three years ago, the province passed legislation to create a Pacific Time zone where the time would remain the same all year, as a result of the most popular public consultation in B.C. history in which 93 per cent of people indicated support for permanent daylight time.
The legislation creates a new name for the permanent time zone called Pacific Time.
The new rules will not require areas in B.C.’s northeast and in the Kootenays, which currently observe Mountain Time, to change their observance practices.
But built into the legislation is a caveat that the province wait until the three states along the coast do the same thing.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate turned back the hands of time by approving the elimination of the more-than-100-year practice of changing the clocks twice a year.
The United States congress stills need to approve the change before an individual state can move ahead with it.
“When I talked to the business community about this, they told me they were all in on this, but (to not) make us out of whack with our neighbours,” Horgan said.
Daylight Saving Time ends this coming Sunday, Nov. 6, at 2 a.m.
The expectation is British Columbia would follow whatever Washington, Oregon and Washington do, but will not get rid of seasonal time changes until then.