The B.C. government says this Sunday will be the last time most British Columbians have to change their clocks.
The province will be permanently adopting daylight time and the March 8 “spring forward” will be the last time change, Premier David Eby announced Monday.
“We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time — and then never again,” Eby said.
Residents will have eight months to prepare for Nov. 1, 2026, when the clocks would have been turned back one hour, but will now remain the same.
B.C.’s new time zone will be called “Pacific time,” according to the province.
A public engagement report in 2019 for the B.C. government found that 93 per cent of respondents preferred year-round daylight time.
Of those who wanted year-round daylight time, three-quarters said it was due to health and wellness concerns.
Eby said the government was waiting for its regional partners on the west coast, in California, Oregon, and Washington to also make the time change, but those states had to wait for congressional approval.
Eby said it was time for B.C. to stop waiting.
“This decision isn’t just about clocks, it’s about quality of life for British Columbians.”
He said changing the clocks causes “all types of problems,” from children and their parents losing sleep, to dogs getting up at the wrong time, to more car accidents.
Eby noted the Yukon has already made the change to permanent daylight time and added he hopes American neighbours will follow suit.
The province said in a news release that some parts of eastern B.C., where residents observe “some form of mountain time,” will not be affected by the move to Pacific Time.
The province said, as an example, that Dawson Creek, which observes mountain standard time all year, will be on the same time as most places in B.C. through the winter and summer. Meanwhile, a place like Cranbrook, which switches between mountain standard time and mountain daylight time, will align with the province in the winter but be one hour ahead in the summer.
The earliest sunrise in June in Vancouver on permanent daylight saving time is expected to be 5:06 a.m. and the earliest sunrise in December would be 9:08 a.m., according to the National Research Council’s 2025 sunrise/sunset calculator.
The latest sunset in December would be 5:14 p.m., and the latest sunset in June would be 9:22 p.m.
Niki Sharma, B.C.’s attorney general, said the change is “a long time coming.”
“B.C.’s been observing this twice annual time change on and off since 1918,” Sharma said. “And now, nearly 110 years later, we get to be the lucky ones who no longer have to worry about the nuisance of cataloguing every analogue clock in our possession.”
“Here’s to a future where kids and pets get the sleep that they need, and the grown-ups too,” Eby said.
