Chris Walton wrote:
I have always maintained that it is better for the members of this list to pick the time zone names because the people here are far more knowledgeable about these things than the politicians or the general public.
That is the dream. That or governments leave legislation with something akin to "A reference to time in _place_ is a reference to _number_ hours _ahead\behind_ Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)." Though I can see where then style guides and government communications may introduce some ambiguity if the document only says "9pm". Chris Walton wrote:
Assigning the string "*-07*" to *America/Vancouver* would make it inconsistent with other UTC-7 zones and would make it the only North American zone using a numeric offset rather than a standard abbreviation.
For the sake of internal consistency and alignment with long-standing usage of MST to mean UTC-7, I favour *MST* over "*-07*".
Agreed. If the Yukon was still using the abbreviation *YST*, then I could see a [weak, but existent] case for something akin to *CPT* (Canadian Pacific Time), but given that is not the case, *MST* seems like it will cause the least headaches for British Columbian's. This move from BC has also started Alberta thinking on stopping the changing of the clocks (see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/smith-daylight-savings-9.7112097), so I'd hate to see a new precedent set that every province will get its own special abbreviation just because the government wrote legislation without doing thorough consultations.