B.C. Premier John Horgan says he’s getting ready to spring forward on making daylight saving time a year-round system.
Horgan said Thursday he has written to the governors of California, Oregon and Washington, where state legislators are all considering bills that would seek an exemption from U.S. federal law so they can opt out of turning the clocks back an hour each fall and then ahead in the spring.
The movement south of the border means it might be time for B.C. to do the same, Horgan said Thursday. He has described the seasonal time change as the number one issue he is contacted about since becoming premier in 2017.
Premier @jjhorgan says he’s looking to work with US states on moving past seasonal time changes #daylightsavings #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/R4pVTpTGXk
— Tom Fletcher (@tomfletcherbc) March 7, 2019
“I sent a letter yesterday or today to the three governors in California, Oregon and Washington,” Horgan told reporters in Victoria. “We believe that if we are going to go forward with a change to keep either permanent daylight saving time or permanent Pacific standard time, we need to do it in all four jurisdictions.
READ MORE: B.C. MLA calls for daylight saving time to stay
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“We have too many economic ties, too many social and cultural ties to have one or two jurisdictions out of synch with the others. My request to the governors was to share information with me.”
Horgan’s action came the day after Boundary-Similkameen MLA Linda Larson presented her version of the change to the B.C. legislature for a third time. Larson is calling for daylight saving time to be adopted year-round.
“The daylight saving time is the time people want,” Larson told Black Press. “They want the extra daylight in the summer months. People are more interested in the light in the nicer months than they are in the winter months.”
B.C. switches to daylight saving time on Sunday, and has stayed in synch with western U.S. states due to the shared economic ties. Horgan noted that unlike U.S. states, B.C. can make the change without input from the federal government.
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