East Kootenay communities to seek feedback on time zone changes

Published 11:33 am Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Cranbrook city council is holding off on making a decision about time zone changes until a consultation process with the RDEK and fellow regional elected officials plays out.

While no decision or adoption is imminent at the local level, council softly took a position to return to Mountain Standard Time — to “fall back” — next November and remain there, which would align with the rest of the province.

“Certainly, the feedback the City has received suggests that residents overwhelmingly support being on the same time zone as the rest of the province year round,” says Mayor Wayne Price, in a press release. “Council has agreed to work closely with our RDEK and First Nations partners in gathering a regional consensus.”

The province recently committed to adopting Pacific Daylight Savings Time permanently.

On March 8, clocks moved an hour ahead to “spring forward” in both time zones, including Pacific and Mountain.

Based on the new provincial protocol, the newly christened Pacific Zone Time will not move their clocks again.

However, under Cranbrook city council’s soft endorsement of moving to Mountain Standard Time, that would mean “falling back” in November one last time in order to align with the rest of B.C.

Elected officials in the region will air out the issue during RDEK board meetings this week.

An RDEK staff report is recommending that the regional district coordinate a survey to seek opinion related to time zone observance in the Mountain Time Zone to help inform decisions by member local governments.

The survey results would be non-binding, meaning individual municipalities would still have their independence to choose which time zone they wish to observe.

One challenge to the issue is that the province says communities have jurisdiction to set time zone observances, however, Cranbrook and the RDEK note that there’s no guidance on how that authority is exercised.

The province’s Interpretation Act establishes what “time” means when provincial enactments refer to time.

However, the Local Government Act contains a specific accommodation for those municipalities and regional districts where Mountain Standard Time or Mountain Daylight Time is “customarily used.”

For those jurisdictions, when the Act refers to a specified time of day, it is read as a reference to Mountain Standard Time or Mountain Daylight Time, as applicable.