B.C. Premier David Eby said he would tell Prime Minister Mark Carney that no trade deal with the U.S. is better than a bad one at a first ministers’ meeting, where he would also push Ottawa for American-style anti-racketeering laws to go after organized crime. Eby and other premiers are set to attend a Council of the Federation meeting on Prince Edward Island before the first ministers’ meeting with Carney. The meetings comes after U.S. President Donald Trump declined to extend the Canada-United States-Mexico trade deal known as CUSMA for another 16 years, triggering concerns about the long-term future of free trade. Eby said in an interview on Friday that B.C. had been consistent in holding that any agreement that entrenched current U.S. tariffs on key industries like softwood lumber would be worse than the status quo. He said softwood must be a “key part” of any resolution, and Carney should continue to “hold the line,” suggesting other countries that rushed into deals had come out worse off. “It has been proven over time, that Canada’s approach has been the right one, which is to resist making a bad deal for the purposes of getting a deal done quickly,” he said. Eby told a news conference earlier Friday that other issues he would press at the meetings included health care, interprovincial trade, wildfire co-operation and the need for a federal legal framework -- similar to U.S. anti-racketeering and anticorruption laws known as the RICO Act -- to target facilitators of crime who currently operate legally. He said a recent U.S. investigation that resulted in the indictment of three B.C. residents highlighted the need for such laws in Canada. While British Columbia had expanded its capacity to seize assets of organized criminals through civil forfeiture, the province’s authority to go after organized crime had been stretched, he said. “We need to make sure that police have the tools like they do in the United States through RICO to go after these things,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be the exact same. It has to be a Canadian version of it. But I believe that legal reform will provide additional tools to, certainly, police in British Columbia and across Canada.” Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said such groups would probably oppose the measures he proposed, and expansions of police authority should be tested, but there was a need to balance those concerns with preserving public safety. “But I’ll be blunt, currently in Canada, I do not believe that we have the full capacities we need to attack organized crime,” he said. “(The) right to life and peace, and to conduct your business in community is a critically important right as well,’” he added. The U.S. Justice Department last week announced the arrests of the B.C. trio among 24 suspects around the world, in connection with offences by India-based criminal groups As for interprovincial trade, Eby said in his interview that B.C. fully supported Ottawa’s proposal to allow provincially-inspected meat to be sold across provincial boundaries. “Anything we can to do to advance that, we will,” he said. The premier said he did not pretend that the work of lowering interprovincial trade barriers had been without challenges in British Columbia. Eby said he would like to be further ahead when it comes to selling B.C. alcohol directly to consumers in other provinces. “We have systems set up for provincial sales, not for national sales,” he said. Internal processes, not ideological opposition, had held up such sales, he told the news conference, adding in his interview that goods safe enough for British Columbians, “should be recognized as safe enough for people in other provinces.” An agreement signed in November between all Canadian provinces, territories and the federal government drops interprovincial trade barriers on all goods, except food, beverages, tobacco, plants and animals. B.C. proposed the measure and chaired the table that led to the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement. Eby said a memorandum of understanding on economic issues signed between B.C. and Ottawa this month had served to lower the temperature between his province and Alberta, and his discussions with Carney would also have a different tone as a result. The May meeting of Western premiers had featured tense exchanges between Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and critics of separatist moves in the province, including Eby and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. But Eby said there remained “strong divisions between the premiers” about how Smith is handling the separatist issue, “and I would include myself in that group.” This report by Wolfgang Depner of The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2026.
