On 10/2/2026 12:18 PM, Brian Inglis via tz wrote:
Any reporting on those details seems to be very local, so it appears unlikely anyone elsewhere in Canada will be using those names or abbreviations.
At this point I see no reason not to use the choices already in 2026e and rely on the National Research Council Canada [1] (as previously linked) for any changes.
NRCC does not conform completely to tzdata (shifting Saskatchewan into "MDT" and Yukon into "PDT" with notes on their 2022 maps). But it is better than creating additional zones just because of a naming difference or foisting "ABT" on NWT because the zone city is in Alberta. There was some pushback in the legislative discussions in Alberta about being on "Saskatchewan Time" (Alberta is not Saskatchewan). SK does not use "SKT" (they have CST and people forget that they started as a MST area).
For places like RDEK and Golden it would be clearer to the world if they used "Alberta Time" (or "Calgary Time") instead of creating a new name that people outside of the region would not know.
I have lived near a time zone line most of my life and when setting meetings I specify "Chicago Time" or "New York Time" when talking to someone out of area since "Indiana Time" required them to think more. That practice going back to a time when Indiana didn't follow DST and the practice continues today since some people don't know the time zone lines. (My more technical contacts accept EST/EDT/CST/CDT etc.)
Either province or big city names will become most common in conversation. I expect NRCC to keep the long standing abbreviations, even if they don't match the conversational common wording.
(And if the naming is an issue, think of MST as the other side of the rocky mountains, CST as central Canada and EST as the eastern half of Canada. It kind of works.)
[1] https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standards/canadas-official-time/time-zones-daylight-saving-time
