It’s been two years since a pair of Kamloopsians introduced their push to end the time change in in the province, a campaign that has garnered immense support from British Columbians and is now gaining traction at the political level.
Liberal MLA for Boundary-Similkameen Linda Larson plans to re-table a private member’s bill in the B.C. Legislature in February that would abolish the time change.
She plans to present 900 pages of 27,000 signatures collected through a petition launched by Kamloops residents Tara Holmes and Bob Dieno.
Holmes and Dieno gathered nearly 25,000 signatures on the petition during the first four months of the campaign they launched in 2015.
“It spread like wildfire,” Holmes said. “We started getting all these national interviews and before we knew it we had way more signatures. You have to get a minimum of like 10,000 signatures in three months or something, but we reached 30,000, it was just nuts.”
The pair has passionately advocated against the twice-yearly time change, citing expert reports around health and safety concerns associated with falling back and springing forward. At one point they got a call from at 80-year-old Alberta resident who has been fighting to end the time change for 20 years.
“We didn’t realize how the education system, WorkSafe BC, ICBC, mental health, seniors, that all these were drastically affected by switching the clocks back and forth,” Holmes said. “So we learned along the way that obviously it was something that was worthwhile.”
Holmes and Dieno quickly got support of the BC Chamber of Commerce, which recommended that the provincial government work with partners to have the Pacific Time Zone in Canada and the U.S. remain on DST throughout the year. The pair also met several times with Kamloops-area MLAs.
Dieno and Holmes met with Larson in Kelowna on Jan. 10 and will meet with Minister of Public Safety Mike Farnworth early in February.
“This is the closest. I think we are really surprised about the amount of people and what we’ve learned over this time and that’s why we want to see this through,” Holmes said. “When we first started this, our goal, we thought within five years we would see this happen.”
While they initially pushed for the province to stay on daylight savings time, Holmes said the debate as to which time zone B.C. commits to is irrelevant. She said the issue will go nowhere if it becomes a debate over daylight savings versus standard time.
“It won’t happen if it just feels like a debate on what do you like better: daylight at night or daylight in the morning?” she said. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about how important it is to stop changing the clock.”
In Alberta, the provincial government scrapped a bill last fall that would have abolished daylight savings. Several organizations, including the Oilers Entertainment Group, were opposed to the bill, according to Global News.
While the petition in B.C. is closed, Holmes and Dieno encourage anyone in support of ending the time change to contact their local MLAs and Premier John Horgan at [email protected].
