British Columbia basically did a similar thing by declaring permanent daylight savings time because, according to the premier, they’re no longer going to wait for the US to move as well before moving themselves.
Except now the situation is objectively worse than it was before, because BC is geographically in the UTC-8 zone, but permanent Pacific Daylight Time is the same as permanent Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7). Except they don’t call it Mountain Standard Time in BC, they stubbornly continue to insist they’re in the UTC-8 zone. Except they don’t call it “Pacific Daylight Time” either, they call it just “Pacific Time”. No “Daylight”. Despite the fact that their standard time is what the rest of North America calls Mountain Time.
They had four good choices, and chose none of them:
UTC-8 year round, call it “Pacific Standard Time”
UTC-7 year round, call it “Mountain Standard Time”
UTC-8 or UTC-7 year round, call it “Western Canada Time”.
The name causes confusion. Let me give you this example. What time UTC would “17:00 PT” be?
That question depends now not only on what time of year it is, but also where. “Pacific Time” now no longer uniquely identifies a single timekeeping scheme.
British Columbia basically did a similar thing by declaring permanent daylight savings time because, according to the premier, they’re no longer going to wait for the US to move as well before moving themselves.
Except now the situation is objectively worse than it was before, because BC is geographically in the UTC-8 zone, but permanent Pacific Daylight Time is the same as permanent Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7). Except they don’t call it Mountain Standard Time in BC, they stubbornly continue to insist they’re in the UTC-8 zone. Except they don’t call it “Pacific Daylight Time” either, they call it just “Pacific Time”. No “Daylight”. Despite the fact that their standard time is what the rest of North America calls Mountain Time.
They had four good choices, and chose none of them:
Decent idea, rubbish execution.
They probably just saved some paperwork. Anyway, all people care were the time zone difference, not name
The name causes confusion. Let me give you this example. What time UTC would “17:00 PT” be?
That question depends now not only on what time of year it is, but also where. “Pacific Time” now no longer uniquely identifies a single timekeeping scheme.
Why call it anything? UTC-7 or -8 are explicit, less confusing internationally & shorter