Trump, Trump, and More Trump…

FRANK MCKENNA: If he's found not guilty, that shifts significantly to 44% favoring Trump, 38% Biden.

PETER HAYNES: Welcome to the May episode of Geopolitics with the Honorable Frank McKenna. My name is Peter Haynes at TD Securities. And I get the pleasure to host this monthly podcast series where we travel around the world to cover the most important global geopolitical issues of the day all from our perch here in Canada. This is episode 52, Frank. We've gone through the deck, and I'm looking forward to going through the second deck starting next month.

But we do need to start on, unfortunately, some sad news. This is the second time in recent months that we've started on a sad note. A couple months back, I had asked you to provide some historical perspective on the life and times of Canada's former prime minister and close friend of yours, Brian Mulroney, who died at the end of February. And this month, I would like you to tell us about the life of New Brunswick business icon Arthur Lee Irving, who passed away on May 13 at the age of 93. And I believe you attended his funeral this week.

FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. It's very sad to lose these giants. For some reason, the soil in the Maritimes grows some giant trees. And we've had Harrison McCain, and Wallace McCain, and David Selby, and Reuben Cohen, and now Art Irving and others of their ilk. These are extraordinary personalities as well as builders of great businesses.

Just on the business side, Irving Oil is a very, very formidable part of the Canadian economy. They operate the biggest refinery in all of Canada, the most complex refinery, the most modern refinery in all of Canada. Biggest exporter from Canada-- 70%, maybe 80% of all of its production goes into the United States. It accounts for over 50% of New Brunswick's exports.

It's a huge job creator. The turnarounds alone each year probably put 1,500 to 2,000 construction trades to work. So it's big, and it's complex.

It includes, I think, some 600 service stations and 20 Big Stops in the Maritimes. If you're looking for gourmet dining, we usually go to the Irving service station, which is where the best and the most plentiful food is, and you can always be sure of the quality of it. In addition to that, they've got an oil delivery business and a lubricants business, own a refinery in Ireland and retail in Ireland. And so it's just a colossus.

And Art Irving was a character. He really single-handedly took this business over from his father and turned it into this huge, globally respected player. And he lived life to the fullest. He was an avid duck hunter, one of the great leaders at Ducks Unlimited in Canada, a motorcyclist right up into his 90s. He used to whiz around the roads of Atlantic Canada and drop into service stations on an outset.

You can imagine what a proprietor would feel like if Art Irving bounced off his motorcycle and went in to check the washrooms. And I say the washrooms because they took legendary pride in having the cleanest washrooms anywhere. And trust me, it worked. My wife is one of those who likes to know where washrooms are before we go on a trip. And she always wanted to know that there was an Irving station within driving range because you could count on clean washrooms there.

He was just one of those people. Knew everybody. He'd go to the hockey game in St. John religiously and sit in the stands there, and talk to everybody no matter where they were or who they worked for. So just one of those down-to-earth people-- always smiling, always optimistic, always reinvesting in the business. So we lost a great friend and a hugely important participant in our regional economy.

PETER HAYNES: Well, I do think it's important that all of Canada-- for that matter, all our listeners-- and we have a lot more listeners outside of Canada-- understand that we have built some incredible business icons in this country. And many of them, as you mentioned, have come from the East Coast. So, again, sad news.

FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. And Peter, I'm just going to add to that a little bit. When I was in Washington as ambassador, I remember one of my friends was the ambassador from Kuwait. And he said, oh, yeah, I know your province. The Amir's a good friend of Arthur Irving. They've done business with each other for 30 or 40 years. So none of us would know that at home.

I had another example. When I was heading up this Energy East program, trying to bring Western Oil to the East Coast and to be transshipped over to Asia, the Irvings were involved in that. And some of the Western producers, when we were trying to sell them on this, would say, well, why do we want the Irvings at the end? Are they serious players and so on? If they're going to be our partners, we need to know more about them.

So I said, well, why don't you go out and meet them and check? And invariably, these producers would come back and say, my god, this is incredible. That refinery is the best that we've ever been through. They are serious partners and trusted partners. So just to say that sometimes a prophet is not knoweth in their own land.

PETER HAYNES: Well, Frank, we're going to continue. Hopefully, we don't have to keep talking about sad developments. But every time it happens, we're going to make a point on this podcast to recognize those great Canadians that have passed on.

Let's shift over across the pond and talk about a surprise move that was made by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. He called an election this week. And it's an early election that will be held on July 4. I believe he had until January of 2025 to call that election, five years from the last election.

Pundits thought he would run out the clock to give as much time as possible to regain the trust of a population, given that the polls will show that the Labour Party is 20 points ahead of Sunak's Conservative Party. And it's clear that after 14 years of Conservative leadership that the country is ready to make a change. What does the future of UK politics look like to you? And what's the 411 on Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer?

FRANK MCKENNA: It was a surprise election call. It was expected to be called in the fall, so it was a surprise. I've been somewhat impressed by Rishi Sunak. I think as a prime minister, he looks good in the job and seems to be cognisant of his responsibilities.

But again, it's a government that is 14 years long in the tooth, well past its best due date. And they were lucky in a way. They had Corbyn, Jeremy Corbyn as a leader of the Labour Party, who took his party sharply left and was unattractive to the electorate in the UK. I think we're going to see a change of government. I think that's highly likely.

I don't think there's any real doubt about that. And it could be very significant. A YouGov poll that was out just this week indicates that the Labour Party will probably win two to three times as many seats as the Conservatives. So it'll be a very significant victory.

Why did he do it? Well, I think there are two or three reasons. I've been listening to pundits on this. Doesn't mean they're right, but some of them are close to it.

One, I think he was tired of dealing with all the dissent in his own party. He had Conservative members who were quitting and actually joining Labour, others that were upset about immigration, others upset about the Middle East, and so on. So it quiets everybody down. I think that's part of it.

Secondly, this is most interesting. As bad as it is, 20-some points behind, there was a feeling that it could get worse. The pain might simply get worse. And there are a lot of issues.

One, Labour is going through a bit of internal turmoil around the Middle Eastern war. They're losing Muslim supports and students over their support for Israel. The number of illegal immigrants coming to the UK is actually accelerating, even though that was a major issue that the government had professed to be able to deal with.

The tax cuts which they had hoped to offer are probably not coming because of the fiscal situation. The polling shows that the economy is number one by a dramatic margin, 49%. Health is a big issue as well. It's really quite broken and hard to fix. And immigration is a hugely important issue as well.

So all of those issues are weighing the government down. I would say, Peter, that overlying it all is the issue that won't be spoken about, and that's Brexit. I just think that the UK made a horrible decision with respect to Brexit. And as a result of that, the economy's been in a steady decline since then. And that's something that is going to continue to weigh on the prime minister and on the UK until they end up dealing with that.

So that's the kind of situation we're in. Are we going to see a change of government? And at the end of the day, we'll see where that goes.

The Labour Party-- just I'll close on this-- has done what is smart for them and smart for most political parties everywhere. And that is, they've taken out some of the more objectionable planks in their platform. They've morphed themselves towards the center, very similar to Tony Blair's style of government. Made themselves an acceptable alternative to the Conservatives. And that also is another reason why a likely result of this election will be a change of government.

PETER HAYNES: Keir Starmer, people don't know too much about him. He doesn't have that high profile outside of the UK. I see lots of images of him meeting with various global officials who are figuring out he's going to be the next leader. Do you know much about him?

FRANK MCKENNA: I know what people tell me. First of all, he's been knighted in his own right. That had nothing to do with his current status as prime minister-in-waiting. He tends to be a moderate, has always been a moderate.

Some people would say he's dull, which is not a bad thing. Again-- I've said this before-- a fish who keeps his mouth shut never gets caught. And he's been very clever at not getting caught.

He's being advised by somebody that I respect enormously, and that's Sir Gus O'Donnell, who's the former secretary of the cabinet and an advisor to TD as well. I do know his shadow chancellor of the exchequer. We did an event together in London a few months ago. She's a very impressive lady-- very centrist, very pragmatic.

So he's surrounded himself with good people, and he's pushed away bad people. He's shown to have good judgment. And he may very well be just what the UK needs at this particular moment of time.

PETER HAYNES: I have read that he is not, however, going to bring a Brexit 2.0 vote that he's going to continue the UK on its own. Do you think he'll get pressure to change that and try to bring the continent back together with the UK, or do you think he'll just continue on the path post-Brexit?

FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah, I think it'll be something in between that. All the political parties believe that relitigating Brexit would be a losing issue. It's just too traumatic. And it would bring out the Nigel LaFarges of the world who will argue till the day they die that Brexit was absolutely the right thing to do.

People do not want to relitigate that, but what they do want is to have a middle approach. And that is to forge closer ties with Europe, to make it easier for trucking to take place or the portability of credentials between Europe and the UK. And that's the path that he'll go down-- in a pragmatic way and a creative way, help to reforge some of the ties with Europe that have been frayed.

PETER HAYNES: Well, we'll have to watch whether or not Europe's going to be a willing partner in some of those negotiations going forward. Because obviously, as you say, there's a lot of trauma and scars left behind from Brexit. A couple of weeks ago, Frank, there was an attempted assassination of Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico.

As I spent some time learning about this assassination attempt and the background on Fico, I was struck by the fact that he represented yet another global leader of an otherwise democratic nation attempting to consolidate power in an authoritarian slash dictatorial fashion along the lines of Orbán in Hungary, Netanyahu in Israel, and, of course, what appears to be the plan for Donald Trump, should he win a second term. According to a 2022 article in The Freedom House, 38% of the global population lives in so-called not free countries, which is the highest proportion since 1997. Is this a cycle that we're in right now or a secular change in politics around the world that might only be resolved through world conflict, which would be good versus evil?

FRANK MCKENNA: Peter, that's a very thoughtful question, and it's a trend that people need to watch very carefully. And you could add some other countries to that. Venezuela clearly is in that camp. I would say Turkey is in that camp as well.

But I don't believe that this is a secular change. I tend to believe-- maybe because I want to believe-- that it's more a cycle that we're going through. There's a natural pendulum that swings back and forth around the world.

I'm reading a really interesting book now by Fareed Zakaria on Age of Revolutions. It talks about the periods that we go through in history, everything from the Industrial Revolution to the French Revolution. These tend to go in cycles. And I think what we're seeing here is a bit of a reaction to people being unhappy around the world, even though prosperity is still relatively high. But the pandemic created all kinds of problems of insularity.

Ukraine war-- as a result of two of those factors, we've ended up seeing inflation and interest rates that are high and just the cost of living being high, people feeling miserable when they go to a grocery store. And then on top of that, as a result of climate change but also displacement from wars, we've seen massive amounts of illegal immigration taking place, which has resulted in a huge backlash in countries around the world. And in many cases, they've been looking for an authoritarian leader as a means of dealing with some of those issues.

But I think that it is more temporary than secular, and give you an example of a government that's gone the other way. Poland has elected Tusk as the president. He is much more in the pro-Europe, more moderate stance. So even though we have seen some headline examples of authoritarian figures, the majority of the world is still governed by democratic governments. And my hope is that the pendulum will swing back even more.

PETER HAYNES: So why don't we check in then on another country that's undergoing massive change? And that's Argentina. We've talked about Argentina in the past.

President Javier Milei is now five months into his very polarizing leadership in which he is attempting to transform a country that literally gave away too much to its citizens and ended up bankrupt. Milei is trying to fix the ills of previous political leaders, but he faces a lot of civil backlash over his reforms. What do you make of Milei's first few months on the job?

FRANK MCKENNA: We need to level set a little bit. Argentina for decades-- the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s-- was considered as the next major global giant. It would be one of the great countries of the world. It has never met that expectation.

And inflation in Argentina has always been a scourge that has resulted in impoverishing people who live with vast natural resources and who should be doing much better. I had a little taste of it. I've visited Argentina on several occasions. I like it a lot.

But the experience we had in Buenos Aires is that if you've got a US dollar in your pocket, it's golden. And if you want to change money, you can go to the bank and get a ridiculously bad rate. You can go to money exchanges, which gives you a better rate. Or, as my wife found out, you can go to the local shoe store and the clerk there will give you a really good rate.

It's just creating horrible conditions for people there. Rates of inflation are totally out of control. So it's not surprising that they're looking for some type of magical solution. So what we're seeing is a mixed bag of results out of Argentina-- a lot of discord, a lot of discontent. And that's to be expected.

As the saying goes, dogs don't bark at parked cars. And Milei is not a parked car. He has got a lot of stuff going on. We're seeing massive protests around university cuts, education cuts.

Then he's fighting with his neighbor. He's called the Colombian leader a murderer and a communist. He's fighting with Spain. Spain has recalled its ambassador. So he's just picking some fights gratuitously that he doesn't need to.

But the big thing that he's trying to do is to rein in the deficit and to create a more competitive economy by privatizing everything from airlines on through. What he's found is that, as all leaders find, is that you can only go so fast as the followership will keep up. And in this case, he's probably outpaced his followership dramatically.

He's had to introduce an emergency decree to try to scrap over 366 laws that are slowing them down on privatizations. He's trying to strip workers' rights because unions have very strong rights there. He's trying to do a lot of things, but he's only got 38 out of 257 seats.

So he doesn't have the power to do the things that he wants to do. So he's relied on an emergency decree, which the courts have said is unconstitutional and which the Senate has rejected. So he's now into the situation where he has to negotiate. And that's where mostly we all end up.

I had all the seats in my first term-- every single seat, no opposition. But I still had a sign on my desk which somebody gave me, which said, "Govern gently." And you do have to always try to keep some level of social license for the things that you do. And that's the game that he's into now, is trying to make the compromises that will allow him to get approval for the very important things that he will want to do.

Having said that, he is having some success, Peter. The IMF has now disbursed $4.7 billion in loans because they like what he's doing in Argentina. Argentina bonds have now rallied some 7%, which is all good news-- shows they're heading in the right direction.

And inflation has slowed rather dramatically. It was 13.2% in February alone. January, it had been at 20.6%. December, 25%. And in April, that's the first month in a long time where they've had single-digit inflation. So on some of the macro indicators, I would say he's making some progress. But he is going to have to go much slower than he originally set out to go and try to achieve some level of consensus with other partners in order to achieve what he wants to achieve.

PETER HAYNES: Well, he's got some green shoots for sure there that you've just indicated. You must have to live in that kind of environment to understand the scourge of inflation though. It's just the numbers-- 20 one month, 13 the next month, 10-- now we're in single digits. My goodness. It's mind boggling, frankly.

And he's a very interesting character. There's a really good feature article in the current-- I don't even know if they publish a magazine anymore, but online magazine-- Time edition. And I encourage our listeners to read that profile. It's very good.

He's a bit of a weird duck there. He lost one of his five dogs, but he still tells everyone he has five dogs instead of four. And he uses his dogs as his sounding board for all of his decisions that he makes. And his sister is his confidante, I guess. So it's a weird situation.

So Frank, I want to come back on a topic we have touched on in the past. And now I'm getting a little bit mad, actually, as a Canadian on this one. And that is NATO.

So yesterday, I believe, or Thursday of the week that we're taping here, there was a bipartisan group of 23 senators that wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau about their concerns that Canada does not have a plan to get our defense spending to the 2% target of GDP, which all members of NATO were supposed to have met by 2024. Now, there was a lot of profile at the last budget about Canada working towards that 2% goal and getting numbers higher. And the US ambassador wrote a nice comment on that.

But the idea that we get to 2% is probably a little bit of a precursor to this notion that Trump has floated, which is that he will create two tiers of NATO and that countries that don't get to the 2% target actually lose their Article V protection, which is the case that if there's an attack on a member, it's an attack on all members. So what are your thoughts with respect to this letter that has come ahead of the 75th anniversary of NATO, which is being celebrated in a couple of months? And why can't we sort out-- this is the part that pisses me off. Why can't we sort out the discrepancies that you pointed out recently in NATO spending calculations, which suggest one country will use certain things they include in their defense spending calculations and others don't?

FRANK MCKENNA: Well, to start with, I thought this letter was gratuitous and unnecessary and interfering, quite frankly. I don't think the United States would like it if [INAUDIBLE] passed a resolution condemning the United States for running trillion-dollar deficits. That has huge potential consequences for the rest of the world. Or for failing to devote the money to Ukraine sufficiently quickly in order to be able to protect Ukraine from what's happening now with Russia on the march. Countries don't like foreign interference, and we shouldn't like it either.

So having said that, I'd say two or three quick things. One, I'm on the side of saying that we should get to a 2% commitment of our GDP. I think it means we have to make some other choices, but I think it's a direction we should be going in. That's number one.

Number two, I believe that Americans need to understand that they count differently from the way we count. We don't include, for example, our Coast Guard or our border authorities, whereas the United States seems to do that. And so I suspect if you went through and carefully inventoried all of the NATO countries, you would find everybody counts somewhat differently.

Three, it's important for Americans to realize that we have made a commitment in this last budget, a very robust increase in defense spending that gets us directionally towards the 2% figure. And fourthly, they need to understand that every cent, virtually every cent that we spend on defense spending, goes to the United States of America. They're the big winner in all of this defense spending.

And five, if I wanted to be mischievous, I might tell President Trump, if he were the president and said that he would not protect Canada under Article V in the event of aggression-- that he might want to explain to the American people why he would allow an enemy to take over Canada and be sitting on the northern border when the United States spent 60 years trying to pulverize a little bit of a spot of sand out in the Caribbean, Cuba, into submission because they had the temerity to consider hosting Soviet weapons. So the United States can say what they want about defending NATO countries. I don't think they're going to want the longest border in the world to have Russian troops from one end to the other and missiles on Canadian soil.

PETER HAYNES: Yep. Well, I'll verbally retweet everything you just said there, Frank, as a Canadian and a proud one. And again, I know a lot of it's rhetoric. But regardless, we're going to have some fun here in the next few months.

Why don't we turn to the fun here and start talking a little bit about what's going on in the US, specifically around the election? So there were some headline-grabbing events that have taken place here. Obviously, there's the case that is currently being tried against former President Trump, which is the hush money case against President Trump.

So Frank, we've all been watching these hearings-- or reading about these hearings, I'm sorry-- there's nothing televised-- over the last few weeks. And the case against Trump will wrap up next week. So I actually want to have you play jury foreman here, Frank. You're now in the room amongst the 12 jurors, which will be deliberating starting next week. Is he guilty or innocent?

FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I don't think there's any doubt that he's guilty of this particular offense, which admittedly is far less serious than all of the other allegations against him. At a very minimum, it should be highly embarrassing-- more than highly embarrassing. It should be shame inducing. But I think we've gone beyond that with President Trump. He's got a Teflon exterior that seems to deflect all kinds of criticism.

But to get to it, I would say that technically the case meets all of the requirements for a conviction. But having said that, it's a jury trial. And the jury may opine on the credibility of various witnesses, or they may simply not like some witnesses-- Cohen, for example.

And they might just say, we don't like that guy. He seems pretty sleazy. And as a result, some of the jurors may end up voting to acquit.

Remember, you have to have a unanimous decision. So it really favors the defendant dramatically. But having said that, I think that on its technical merits, there's enough there to have a guilty verdict.

So what's interesting are the political ramifications of that. Marquette was out with a poll this week on exactly that, and the results are quite fascinating. And bear in mind that in the United States there's the popular vote and the electoral college vote, and they're two different things.

People, including President Trump, former president Trump, seemed to forget in the last election whatever you might say about the Electoral College, the popular vote was seven million votes more in favor of Biden than Trump. I mean, it's a colossal popular vote advantage Biden had. And I suspect he and his supporters would be properly outraged if they were denied victory with that massive amount of popular vote majority.

Just going on popular vote-- now, this Marquette poll shows that if he's found guilty, 43% would vote for Biden and 39% for Trump. So advantage Biden on a guilty verdict. But-- and here's the big but-- if he's found not guilty, that shifts significantly to 44% favoring Trump, 38% Biden. In other words, he gets a significant lift if he's found not guilty in that case, although he suffers a deficit if he is found guilty.

So having said that, if he's found guilty, he'll appeal it. And then he'll appeal the appeal, and it'll go on and on. And he'll say that the New York case doesn't matter because it's a biased jury in a biased city with a biased judge. And his supporters will probably believe it-- more or less even out. All of that to say that a guilty verdict hurts him, but a not-guilty verdict helps him.

PETER HAYNES: So I'm going to actually ask you a different question, Frank. You're now the judge in the New York hush money case, and the jury found Trump guilty. And of course, he appeals.

What conditions are you putting on him? Is he going to be allowed to travel around the country and campaign? Is he going to be confined to-- are you going to put him in jail? What are you going to do as the judge?

FRANK MCKENNA: I think as a judge you're courting open civil war in the United States if you restrict him from campaigning or running, probably if you put him in jail as well. I think more likely result is a significant fine and/or some element of community service, but something that's non-custodial in my view. And by the way, I'm going to throw this out gratuitously because-- and that is to say this.

I think those who are opposed to former President Trump getting in office are making a significant mistake in their tactics. And they've allowed him to play the martyr role, which he plays beautifully. He's extraordinarily talented at being the martyr, the butt of the CIA and the FBI, and everybody's out to get him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he's being charged with this, and it's fake charges, and all of the rest of that.

He's played that beautifully to his advantage, both in raising money and support. I would strongly recommend people who want to oppose President Trump go in the other direction, and that is to make the country the martyr and him the perpetrator. And I would take that approach.

And I watched that with OJ Simpson, who recently died, but he was acquitted. But in the court of public opinion, he was convicted and never really had any respect again. I've watched that in other cases as well where the person, no matter how they skate away from the courts of criminal justice, in the court of public opinion they're tried and convicted. I think that would be a much better route to take than allowing Trump to play the victim card in all of his cases.

PETER HAYNES: So let's finish up on baseball. Good news, bad news story here, Frank. First of all, the good news-- following the recent success of Alek Manoah in his last two starts, the Toronto Blue Jays starting rotation is now what I'll call first class from number one to number five. That's it for the good news.

Where do I start on the bad news? Frank, our offense is a disaster. Our manager seems to be lost in the headlights.

And after being AWOL for the past month to address media inquiries, our GM, Ross Atkins, decided to meet the media in the middle of a long weekend before the start of a stretch against weak opponents. The start of such a stretch is normally a time to change the manager, yet Schneider remains in place. Are you surprised that he's still in his chair?

FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I'm probably more surprised that Atkins and Shapiro are still in their seat. Because, well, I think that Schneider is guilty of a lot of sins. He's not the one who has really put that team on the field. When I look at some of the terrible trades that have been made or the inability during the offseason to strengthen the lineup, that really goes to Atkins and Shapiro and just seeing consistently bad decisions being made, I think, on the trade market. And particularly when I think about losing Gurriel and Moreno, the catcher of the future, I just think those are mistakes.

Having said that, there are a few green shoots. One of them, you mentioned the pitching staff. I think it's elite. Manoah can keep on what he's doing. It's really elite. I think our relievers, especially the middle relievers, aren't completely up to scratch at this stage. But there are some arms coming back into the lineup that will potentially move us into an elite category there in terms of relief as well.

But at the end of the day, we've got a lot of players that we're paying a lot of money to that aren't producing. And it's just like we've talked with political leaders and so on. There has to be accountability. Whether people are to blame or not, there has to be accountability.

And although we've had a good run the last few days, we just have to have better hitting up and down the lineup. And in the absence of hitting, we need more imagination in terms of managing the game. And I don't see much of that happening either. So count me as a reasonably disillusioned fan living in hope, starting to worry as to whether or not this team is good enough to make the playoffs.

PETER HAYNES: Yeah, I don't think we are, I have to admit unfortunately, offensively. Although admittedly, the green shoots that we haven't discussed are the fact that Guerrero and Bichette are starting to hit, which can definitely take us somewhere. I'm going to come back to a simple point here.

We had Alex Anthopoulos, who was a Canadian who was our GM, and we all loved him. And look, he's gone on to arguably be the number one GM in baseball in Atlanta. And we now have management that are not Canadian.

And last year, when we were eliminated on, I think, a Tuesday, they held their management media event on the Saturday following our dismissal, which was Thanksgiving weekend. And a lot of people said, well, why did you wait till Saturday when it's the Thanksgiving weekend? It's a holiday in Canada. And then again, he holds his media availability on the Saturday of our Victoria Day weekend, which, again, is a Made in Canada holiday.

I just think that that's disrespectful to us in Canada and the media in Canada to get called down to his office at 9:00 AM on Saturday or whenever it was that he decided to have this meeting on the long weekend. I know I'm making a big deal out of that. It bothered me in the fall, and then when I heard about it this week, it bothered me now. So anyways, I want us to be successful. We'll see.

FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah, Peter, you're not wrong on that. And what management have to understand is Blue Jays aren't just a ball team. They're a country's ball team. The whole of Canada cheer for this team. Witness the crowds that are down in Seattle, in Minnesota, and so on.

We should be entitled to an ownership group that are open and transparent, sympathetic when needed to be, but to be communicative, communicate to the country about the fate of their team. And I don't feel like we're getting that. And I just would love to see the day come when we have open, transparent communications, admitting mistakes when there are mistakes made, and giving us reason for optimism about the future, and making it clear that management ownership is totally committed to delivering to Canada a championship team. That's what I'd like. That's what I'd like to hear.

PETER HAYNES: Hear, hear. Let's hope for a little bit more transparency in the future. Look forward to chatting with you again in June, Frank. Thanks. And we'll catch up again in a month.

FRANK MCKENNA: Thank you.

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