One of two people behind a move to stop the time change in British Columbia says this year would have been the ideal time to end the twice annual time change.

Tara Holmes says its because the border with the United States is closed due to COVID-19 concerns.

“NHL teams aren’t flying around. Airlines are flying less. People are home, so if there was ever a time it was now,” she said. “And especially on the mental health issue of this. Mental health is of huge concern right now with COVID but now heading into the season where its darker, we lose the daylight at the end of the day, and doctors are quite concerned.”

Holmes adds she was a little surprised the issue did not come up on the election campaign trail, thought she believes it might be because the issue has support across party lines.

“John Horgan, he gets more correspondence on this issue than anything else. When we first started this five years ago, it was with the Liberals who originally tabled the bill. Now its the NDP that we are dealing with,” she added.

“John Horgan has been great about mailing me the big survey and he’s sent me the bill as a souvenir, but I’m telling Mr. Horgan that I don’t want souvenirs any more, I just want action. Its time to do it.”

British Columbia will make the move to permanent day light savings time only if our neighbours to the south do so as well.

As it stands, B.C., Oregon and Washington have passed legislation to end the twice annual time change, but California has not as the issue was held up by the Senate Energy Committee in that state.

That means, at 2 a.m. on Nov. 1, clocks need to fall back one hour to Pacific Standard Time.

Daylight Saving Time is set to return again on March 14, 2021, but its unclear if that will be last time the clocks in the province will have to be changed.