On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 at 18:01, via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
There is also a few consequential amendments noted in the Act that are effected as a result of this OIC. Namely the Election Act and the Vancouver Charter.
The changes to the Election Act in BC just clean up references like "Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Saving Time, as applicable". Somewhat more significant is the change to the Vancouver Charter, which repeals the section allowing the Council (essentially the provincial government's cabinet) to "prescribe a period in each year" for DST. In other words, this week's announcement is a one-way change that the Council could undertake at their option, which the recent Order in Council (OIC) effectuates. If it is to be undone at some later date, it would no longer be a matter for the Council, but would instead have to go through new legislation. On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 at 17:12, Chris Walton <crj.walton@gmail.com> wrote:
Of course "Pacific Standard Time" (not to be confused with anybody's local definition of "Pacific Time") will remain entrenched in the Federal interpretation act as being GMT-8.... just like "Yukon Standard Time" continues to be entrenched in the Federal interpretation as being GMT-9. From https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-21/:
In particular, the definition of "standard time" in section 35 of the federal Interpretation Act. Note that it still lists Saskatchewan as being in the Mountain time zone, despite their long-standing observance of CST. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-21/page-3.html#h-279462 This also points to one potential wrinkle to be ironed out — For federal elections governed by the federal Canada Elections Act, after handling the Newfoundland and Atlantic time zones, polling times are synchronized across the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones, with special language handling Saskatchewan's widespread CST observance. (Of course, small exceptions abound in border communities which are the remit of Elections Canada and beyond the scope of this conversation.) After polls close in those regions at 9:30pm Eastern/7:30pm Mountain, polls close in the Pacific time zone a half-hour later at 7:00pm. And indeed, polls in BC and Yukon did just that in the April 2025 federal election. But with the new interpretation, 7:00pm "new" Pacific time, being equivalent to 7:00pm Mountain time in the winter, could potentially create a confusing scenario in which polls would close on the west coast a half-hour *before* the interior of the country. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-2.01/page-11.html#h-204817 Technically, this could have affected Yukon similarly at any point since 2020, but Canada hasn't had a federal election outside of the annual DST period since 2006 so it just hasn't come up. So definitely something to potentially watch for in Ottawa. On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 at 02:32, Brian Inglis via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
Might want to label this zone BC Pacific Time rather than Canadian
But Quebec, and/or New Brunswick, and/or the Federal Government represented by Canadian national standards bodies e.g. NRC, could raise issues about what they will call it in English and French to avoid confusion across or between jurisdictions, and decide to keep calling it Mountain Standard Time MST and Heure Normale des Rocheuses HNR in French, or even Yukon Standard Time YST, to avoid confusion with US time zone labels.
Although the population of the affected region (the majority of BC) does outnumber those in existing "year-round MST" regions in Canada by a factor of several dozen, the population/scale is not really the key difference here. Rather, it's an issue of nomenclature: The *entirety* of what was once called the "Pacific" time zone in Canada has now been completely redefined at either local or provincial/territorial levels. There's no good way around it that won't affect developers in both Canada and the US. Ruby on Rails' ActiveSupport::TimeZone, for instance, attempts to "[l]imit the set of zones provided by TZInfo to a meaningful subset". It maps the string "Pacific Time (US & Canada)" to "America/Los_Angeles". The baked-in assumptions, once seemingly reasonable, now swiftly break down. https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/TimeZone.html While standards bodies will undoubtedly put in their two cents on terminology, much of the public's awareness and parlance will likely be shaped by broadcast (and, to a lesser extent, print) media, and possibly even things like sports leagues. In particular, the operations of the National Hockey League (NHL) prominently straddle the US–Canadian border. Next winter, when a US national broadcaster advertises a cross-border game for "8[pm] Eastern, 5 Pacific", will a Canadian broadcaster be saying "8 Eastern, 6 Pacific", or will they use different terminology in an attempt to avoid confusion where someone reading a Canadian article stateside tunes in an hour late? On NHL's website, one can choose to view league schedules in any of the major continental time zones from Newfoundland to Pacific, including "Mountain (Arizona)" as Arizona once had a team in the league. (Though Saskatchewan, which doesn't, is not present; the all-prevalent "Your Time Zone" option covers that for those affected, I guess.) Will a separate "Pacific (British Columbia)" option be added do disambiguate from the US west coast, or will it be combined with the equivalent time in Arizona, with or without any mention of "Mountain" or "Pacific"? https://www.nhl.com/schedule On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 at 13:51, Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
I suspect "MST" will be the best of a bad lot of alphabetic abbreviations, due to software compatibility issues.
I agree that "MST" is probably the "best of a bad lot" due in large part to the legacy concerns here and existing use in neighboring regions. Anything with a "P" begs for some sort of disambiguation, which would be clunky at best, and I'm quite wary of the more esoteric options Paul and I brainstormed which would introduce punctuation into otherwise alphabetic abbreviations. That said, I will gently remind readers that part of the reason this project asks for long leadtimes is precisely to afford us the opportunity to work out these sorts of issues *ahead* of cutting a release where possible. There is obviously much work and testing to do downstream as well, so we don't expect to wait past the early part of spring, which still leaves many months ahead of BC's planned divergence from past practice slated for 1 November 2026. In the meantime, if a more urgent change pops up elsewhere in the world necessitating a quicker release, "-07" will indeed suffice in the short-term. Hopefully some combination of official guidance and/or functional consensus can emerge quickly. If folks know anyone in Canadian media, especially those who may be involved in discussions on how this change will affect internal style guides, editorial standards, and the like, I suppose that could help us to move things along. -- Tim Parenti