logo
Eby says U.S. economic integration 'last thing' B.C. wants, ahead of White House trip

Eby says U.S. economic integration 'last thing' B.C. wants, ahead of White House trip

CBC12-02-2025

Social Sharing
British Columbia Premier David Eby says "the last thing" the province is considering is further economic integration with the United States, as he and other premiers prepare for a White House meeting with President Donald Trump's advisers.
Eby says that instead B.C. is "looking for other customers" for everything from aluminum to seafood.
He says the premiers have had a series of "really positive discussions" with Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., as they seek to head off Trump's threatened tariffs.
The Council of the Federation, which represents all provincial and territorial premiers, says that due to the White House meeting, all other engagements were cancelled for Wednesday afternoon.
Eby said earlier the common theme in the meetings so far is that elected representatives from all parties understand the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and Canada, as well as the objectives.
But, he says "it's a puzzle" for British Columbians why the U.S. would, for example, place a tariff on aluminum that they cannot get elsewhere.
Eby says Canada will never be the 51st state as Trump has suggested, but there is a lot to be discussed with the U.S. about working closely together on transnational organized crime "or whatever it is the president is interested in."
He says the two countries don't have to fight and cause economic damage to each other.
Aluminum sector looks for other markets
British Columbia's aluminum sector will find new markets beyond the U.S., provincial Mines Minister Jagrup Brar said, after the prospect of American tariffs as high as 50 per cent on Canadian metal exports emerged.
Trump's planned 25 per cent tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum would be stacked on top of a broad 25 per cent levy on Canadian goods, said a White House official who confirmed the plan on background.
"Whether it's 25 per cent or more, it's going to affect families and businesses on both sides. There's no doubt about that," Brar said in an interview on Tuesday.
"We are very confident that we can help the aluminum business access markets as quickly as possible."
WATCH | B.C. breweries could take hit from aluminum, steel tariffs:
How aluminum and steel tariffs could impact B.C. breweries
16 hours ago
Duration 8:36
Mike Patterson from Steamworks Brewing Company says that Canadian aluminum is often used to make cans in Washington state, which then get shipped back to B.C. craft breweries. He says he's trying to make the case against punishing U.S. tariffs with the Craft Brewers Guild and other breweries in the Pacific Northwest.
Brar said it takes roughly five years to get an aluminum smelter up and running, so U.S. consumers would be paying more for goods made from aluminum for at least that amount of time.
"It's a fact that B.C. is well positioned to diversify our trade and help businesses access new markets," Brar said.
The 25 per cent U.S. tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports were announced Monday and are set to take effect on March 12. Trump previously threatened 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on Canadian imports, with a lower 10 per cent levy on Canadian energy, and said those tariffs could still proceed in early March.
B.C. produces aluminum as well as metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel. While some of B.C.'s metallurgical coal is exported to the U.S., most of it is shipped to other markets such as Asia, Brar said.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Wildfires Push Climate Onto the Agenda as G7 Leaders Meet in Alberta
Wildfires Push Climate Onto the Agenda as G7 Leaders Meet in Alberta

Canada Standard

time23 minutes ago

  • Canada Standard

Wildfires Push Climate Onto the Agenda as G7 Leaders Meet in Alberta

With the G7 leaders' summit due to descend on Kananaskis, Alberta June 15-17, questions are swirling about what Canada can accomplish with this year's G7 presidency and how agreement is possible with Donald Trump in the room-while swirling smoke from a devastating Prairie wildfire season helps bring climate change back onto the leaders' agenda. Now in its 50th year, the G7 brings together the leaders of seven of the world's biggest economies plus the European Union in what is described as a "forum for co-operation, stability, and shared prosperity." The leaders' summit each year is meant to end with a consensus statement of all the countries. But community voices on everything from climate change to international finance and justice have rarely been satisfied with the outcome. Much of the news analysis leading up to this year's event has cast the G7 as a diminished institution, reduced to handshakes, photo ops, and carefully-worded generalities that are the most the countries can agree to. Coming into this year's summit, the G7's "legitimacy is hanging by a thread. Its promises have fallen flat, its unity is strained, and its moral voice is fading fast," retired civil servant Bhagwant Sandhu writes for The Hill Times. "Originally conceived as a multilateral pact among Western democracies to steward global economic control, the G7 was never intended to serve the desires of its most powerful-and now unpredictable and illiberal-member: the United States," he adds. "The group's initial goals have been obscured by authoritarianism, unilateral action, and creeping militarization." That leaves Prime Minister Mark Carney with a choice, Sandhu says. "Canada can, of course, preside over the usual choreography of communiques and handshakes-or try something more ambitious: restore the G7 to its founding mission." Carney's office kicked off that discussion June 7 with a list of the three "core missions" the PM will pursue in his role as G7 president, all "anchored in building stronger economies"-the same priority, CBC points out, that he has brought to the domestic scene in Canada. The list includes: "Protecting our communities and the world" by "strengthening peace and security, countering foreign interference and transnational crime, and improving joint responses to wildfires"; View our latest digests Building energy security and speeding up the "digital transition" by fortifying critical mineral supply chains and using technologies like artificial intelligence to spur economic growth; Investing in stronger infrastructure, creating higher-paying jobs, and fostering "dynamic", competitive markets for business. But much of the attention so far has been on the chaos Trump will bring to the table, just as he did in 2018 when Canada last hosted the G7 in Charlevoix, Quebec. Then, as now, U.S. tariffs were at the centre of the discussion, and Trump issued two angry tweets pulling the U.S. out of the leaders' final communique, just hours after countries had signed off on the text. "A show of unity on big geopolitical problems that holds longer than a few hours after President Donald Trump's participation will be seen as success after the American president in 2018 blew up a fragile consensus even before he left the last Canada-hosted G7 in Charlevoix, Que., later angrily insulting then-prime minister and G7 host Justin Trudeau," writes Toronto Star Ottawa bureau chief Tonda McCharles. This time around, "a key performance indicator for the summit will [be] getting something down that all leaders can agree upon that will also include the U.S.-and that will be a challenge," Deanna Horton, a diplomat who served twice in the Canadian embassy in Washington, told The Hill Times. On June 11, McCharles reported that organizers of this year's summit are not looking for a final communique that represents a consensus of all G7 members. "Instead, G7 host Carney is expected to issue a G7 chair's statement and the closed-door high-stakes sessions that could nevertheless produce some heated discussions will be summarized in documents likely to be so whitewashed of the juicy bits, that they could almost be written in advance." The Star has details on how the Summit agenda is likely to play out. Carney has also stirred controversy with the list of "middle power" countries he's invited to the summit. In addition to the leaders of Ukraine, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and South Korea, the list includes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been linked to acts of murder and extortion on Canadian soil, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been connected to human rights crackdowns, mistreatment of migrants, and the 2018 murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Meanwhile, Carney's plan for the summit makes scant direct reference to past G7 commitments in areas like power sector decarbonization, methane controls, forest and land degradation, and elimination of fossil fuel subsidies-a promise the countries made in 2016 and were supposed to deliver on by this year. "Its climate commitments remain stalled, and the vaunted $600-billion infrastructure pledge to the Global South-first announced in 2021 as the 'Build Back Better World' initiative-has been more frequently rebranded and re-announced than realized," Sandhu writes for The Hill Times. Moreover, "the G7 has yet to fulfill its decades-old promise to allocate 0.7% of each member's gross national income to humanitarian aid. At the start of the 2023 Hiroshima summit, it was still short by a staggering US$4.49-trillion. More troubling still, members like the United Kingdom have diverted aid funds from humanitarian crises to finance NATO expansions, raising serious questions about the group's priorities." In a release this week, Oxfam warned the G7 is in the midst of its biggest-ever foreign aid cut. The member countries, which account for three-quarters of the world's official development assistance, are on track to cut their aid budgets 28% in 2026 compared to 2024 levels, the organization said. "Rather than breaking from the Trump administration's cruel dismantling of USAID and other U.S. foreign assistance, G7 countries like the UK, Germany, and France are instead following the same path, slashing aid with brutal measures that will cost millions of lives," said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. "The G7's retreat from the world is unprecedented and couldn't come at a worse time, with hunger, poverty, and climate harm intensifying. The G7 cannot claim to build bridges on one hand while tearing them down with the other." Meanwhile, in a G7 agenda stripped bare of any language that could rile up a volatile U.S. president, author Arno Kopecky says the massive wildfires covering swaths of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia are playing into Canadian officials' plan for keeping climate change in the conversation. When officials first began planning the meeting last year, "Canada's Liberal government wanted the G7 to discuss climate change (the host nation sets the summit agenda), but what if Donald Trump was there as President?" Kopecky writes for the Globe and Mail. "This was no abstract worry either: the day before Jasper caught fire, Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race, and the Democrats' prospects looked dismal." Officials "knew that if they start with the standard stuff on climate change, Donald Trump and his people would get out their red pens and just say 'no way,'" John Kirton, founding director of the G7 Research Group, told Kopecky. "So then, what is your strategy? And wildfires was the answer." The difference, Kopecky writes, is that while Trump refuses to listen to climate science, he's seen a rash of wildfires since he returned to the White House in January, and his country is now receiving smoke from the blazes in Canada. "So Donald Trump's got a reason to be seen to be doing something about it," Kirton said. It also "speaks volumes" that the energy security section of the G7 agenda talks about artificial intelligence, but makes no reference to oil and gas, Kopecky writes. Source: The Energy Mix

Australia's defense minister downplays concerns over Pentagon review of multi-billion submarine deal
Australia's defense minister downplays concerns over Pentagon review of multi-billion submarine deal

Winnipeg Free Press

time33 minutes ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

Australia's defense minister downplays concerns over Pentagon review of multi-billion submarine deal

BANGKOK (AP) — Australia's defense minister dismissed concerns Thursday that a deal between the U.S., Australia and Britain to provide his country with nuclear-powered submarines could be in jeopardy, following a report that the Pentagon had ordered a review. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told Sky News Australia that he had known about the review of the deal 'for some time,' saying that it was a 'very natural step for the incoming administration to take.' He noted that the UK's government also reviewed the deal, the centerpiece of a three-way alliance known as AUKUS after it was elected, and that his own government had looked at it as part of its own review of Australia's entire defense posture. 'I think an incoming government having a look at this is something that they have a perfect right to do and we welcome it and we'll work with it,' he said. The deal, worth more than $200 billion, was signed between the three countries in 2021 under then President Joe Biden, designed to provide Australia, one of Washington's staunchest allies in the region, with greater maritime capabilities to counter China's increasingly strong navy. The deal also involves the U.S. selling several of its Virginia-class submarines to Australia to bridge the gap as the new submarines are being jointly built. In January, Australia made the first of six $500 million payments to the U.S. under the AUKUS deal, meant to bolster American submarine manufacturing. Marles met with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the sidelines of a defense conference in Singapore less than two weeks ago, and told reporters afterward that he had come away with 'a sense of confidence about the way in which AUKUS is proceeding.' 'AUKUS is on track and we are meeting all the timelines that are associated with it,' he said. 'We are very optimistic.' Hegseth's address to the defense forum made multiple mentions of cooperation with Australia but no reference to AUKUS, however, though he did later mention the deal when he was taking questions. Hegseth did urge allies in the Indo-Pacific to increase their defense spending, and underscored the need for a 'strong, resolute and capable network of allies and partners' as the U.S. seeks to counter China.

Canada's Conservatives still aren't serious about housing
Canada's Conservatives still aren't serious about housing

National Observer

time36 minutes ago

  • National Observer

Canada's Conservatives still aren't serious about housing

He was so close to getting it. Jacob Mantle, the newly-elected thirty-something Conservative MP for York-Durham, rose in the House of Commons on Tuesday to make a point about housing costs. 'Oxford Economics reports that Toronto's housing market ranks among the worst in the world for affordability. At the same time, mortgage delinquency rates in Toronto are higher than at any time during the pandemic. The financial burden is suffocating the next generation of homebuyers.' But Mantle wasn't actually interested in proposing solutions to that problem. Instead, he wanted to whine about the fact that the Carney government isn't going to table a budget until the fall, which the government has defended on the basis that it will be better able to account for the fallout from Donald Trump's tariffs by then. And despite his supposed concern over housing, Mantle was dismissive of the government's plan to embrace and scale up modular housing in Canada. 'My generation refuses to live in a shipping container,' Mantle said. For what it's worth, I suspect many members of his generation (and mine) would be happy to live in the sort of modified shipping containers that are being designed and built right now, including the ones in his own city. But modular housing is so much more than just the use and conversion of shipping containers. It's an entirely new approach to homebuilding, one that uses factories and their inherent economies of scale to drive down costs. They can be one or two-storey, single or multi-family, and configured in any number of layouts and sizes. In an environment where driving down construction costs is a nearly existential issue for Mantle's generation, you'd think he would be more open to new ideas and economic innovation — especially when it promises to use more Canadian materials and labour. Then again, if you've been paying close attention to the Conservative Party of Canada's approach to this issue, his behaviour was entirely predictable. Under Pierre Poilievre's leadership, the party and its MPs have repeatedly highlighted the very real problem of rising housing costs in Canada and the disproportionate impacts they have on younger people. But when it comes to actual solutions to that problem — ones, at least, that don't involve cutting taxes or regulations and assuming the market will magically solve the problem it has helped create — those same Conservatives either disappear into the metaphorical bushes or come out on the other side of the issue. In Calgary, for example, opposition to a city-wide measure to increase affordability and density while reducing sprawl came mostly from Conservative-leaning councilors like Dan McLean, Peter Demong and Sean Chu, with some conspicuous cheerleading work coming from federal Conservative MP Greg McLean. In British Columbia, provincial Conservative party leader John Rustad decided to go to bat for the very 'gatekeepers' standing in the way of new housing that Poilievre had repeatedly promised he would eliminate. Even in Ontario, where Conservative politicians have been more visibly and vocally on-side with pro-supply measures, the results of the Ford government's efforts have been underwhelming, to say the least. We are not in a moment where we can afford to reflexively turn our noses up at potential solutions. And yet, Conservative politicians like Mantle seem determined to find fault in every proposed approach that doesn't flatter their own pre-existing ideological and political biases towards cutting taxes and reducing government involvement. Modular housing will not be, in and of itself, the solution to a problem that has been building for more than two decades. But that's only because nothing on its own will, or could, be the solution. The Carney government has embraced modular housing as a way to lower costs and improve affordability in Canada's housing market. Canada's Conservatives, on the other hand, seem determined to miss the mass timber for the trees. Instead, we need every possible lever being pulled right now, from regulatory reform and improved operating efficiencies to direct government involvement, procurement, and even development. Mantle is right that the status quo has failed his generation. But he's wrong to indignantly oppose a good-faith effort at challenging and changing it, and all the more so as he pretends to speak on behalf of an entire generation. We can only hope that his party and its online proxies don't decide to turn modular housing into this year's iteration of the 15-minute city and throw a self-evidently good and decent idea into the stew of online conspiracies it always seems to have at low boil. Yes, that might feed the eternally hungry appetites of their increasingly online political base. But it won't do anything to address the problem Conservatives like Mantle claim to care about. At some point, Canadians may conclude that they're not actually all that interested in solving it.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store