Local government in southeast B.C. takes regional lead in dumping seasonal time changes

Lawmakers in southeastern B.C. have sprung ahead of their wider region in opting to do away with seasonal time changes.

By a board vote of 12-3, Regional District of East Kootenay says it’s decided it’s changed its clocks for the last time and will permanently observe the current Mountain daylight time.

The district includes the Columbia Valley, which is immensely popular with Albertans and is headquartered in Cranbrook.

That decision came after 89 per cent of 14,000 survey respondents supported the move, said the district, which added two-thirds of respondents chose to stick with mountain daylight savings time.

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“This issue has garnered an incredible amount of passion and engagement from the public and that speaks to how much it matters to people,” RDEK Board Chair, Rob Gay, said in a press release Friday.

“We had extensive participation in the survey, and the results were very clear. Over the past few months, the directors have also done their own research and engagement with residents.”

Without that decision, the district would have moved its clocks back an hour on Nov. 1 and sprung ahead by sixty minutes the following March.

That decision brings the area in line with most of the rest of B.C., with the provincial government choosing to drop the twice-annual clock changes last March to establish what they’ve branded Pacific Time.

That left out areas of the province covered the mountain time zone, with the district saying they’ve been working with other local leaders in the province’s east to create consistency in their clock observance.

The board said it will “ share its decision with neighbouring local governments in Golden and Columbia Shuswap Regional District (Area A) as they will need to independently determine their time observance.”