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.
What I understood was PT is UTC-7, PDT is UTC-7 and PST is UTC-8, am I right? I am guessing in Canada you all were refering to PST and PDT as ‘pacific time’ and that causes confusion?
“Pacific Time” means “whatever the civil time is in the Pacific Time Zone, accounting for daylight saving time”. So that would be 23:04 (UTC-7) as of writing.
If today’s date were instead 30 December, “Pacific Time” would be 22:04 (UTC-8) in Washington, Oregon, and California, while it would be 23:04 (UTC-7) in British Columbia and Yukon. Both would be called “Pacific Time” despite not being the same time, and both being on standard time.
Weird not to have any coordination at all. Another example I found - CST can simultaneously mean Central Standard Time (North America), China Standard Time, or Cuba Standard Time.
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.
What I understood was PT is UTC-7, PDT is UTC-7 and PST is UTC-8, am I right? I am guessing in Canada you all were refering to PST and PDT as ‘pacific time’ and that causes confusion?
“Pacific Time” means “whatever the civil time is in the Pacific Time Zone, accounting for daylight saving time”. So that would be 23:04 (UTC-7) as of writing.
If today’s date were instead 30 December, “Pacific Time” would be 22:04 (UTC-8) in Washington, Oregon, and California, while it would be 23:04 (UTC-7) in British Columbia and Yukon. Both would be called “Pacific Time” despite not being the same time, and both being on standard time.
Ah right, got it.
Weird not to have any coordination at all. Another example I found - CST can simultaneously mean Central Standard Time (North America), China Standard Time, or Cuba Standard Time.