VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Despite insistence from the province that Family Day will stay where it is, one man’s petition to see the holiday land of the third Monday of February has gathered hundreds of online signatures.

This is the latest push for a switch to sync our holiday up with other provinces and the US.

Tired of a situation which sees many people forced to work on our Family Day due to their companies having a national focuses or business with the United States, local financial adviser Andrew Johns has launched a Change.org petition calling for our holiday to be bumped back a week.

“A lot of people have come to me, working as a federal employee or a company that has a national presence, and they had to work last Monday… and need to go to work again today because they’ve got clients here in BC,” he tells us.

“I was putting a petition together to see if I was the only one out there that had this opinion. I’m now convinced that I’m not.”

Johns isn’t the only one who holds this position, just last week, the Surrey Board of Trade announced it would be sending a letter to the province requesting the same switch.

Richard Truscott with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business also says it’s worth reconsidering. “You know gosh the rest of the country does have their Family Day and it might make some sense to align with what the rest of the country is doing.”

He says for national firms, having two separate stat-holidays in the same month makes it tricky to run a business.

The provincial government responded to News1130 last week confirming they won’t be moving the day.