Post Election Hangover – Now What?

FRANK MCKENNA: Without the United States' full-throated support of the war effort in Ukraine, it will be very difficult for Ukraine to prevail.
PETER HAYNES: Welcome to the November episode of Geopolitics with the Honorable Frank McKenna. My name is Peter Haynes at TD Securities, and I host this podcast series each month where we get to hear perspectives from Frank on global geopolitical issues. I've gotten to know Frank quite well in the close to five years we've been doing this podcast. And I never cease to be amazed at his bandwidth of knowledge, although I sometimes question his dying love for the Blue Jays. Frank, thanks again for taking the time to be with us today.
FRANK MCKENNA: I'm pleased to be here.
PETER HAYNES: So we did miss you a couple of weeks ago on the Geopolitics panel at our annual November conference, as I believe you were traveling on vacation in the Far East. Now that you've had a couple of weeks to absorb the decision of the American people to bring back Donald J. Trump for a second term at president, what surprised you the most about the election result?
FRANK MCKENNA: I would say I was surprised at the magnitude of the victory. Trump did end up winning the popular vote. That was unexpected by almost everybody. It was not unexpected by everybody that he would win the election because of the electoral college. But he ended up winning the popular vote, not quite reaching 50% but a very high number.
And he won convincingly in the Senate. We all knew the Senate would switch. But I think most forecasters would have been surprised at the results in Ohio and Pennsylvania. So that would be somewhat surprising. And in the House, I think it was generally agreed it would be close, and it is extremely close, perhaps only three or four seats out of that entire House. But it gave them a trifecta, and that would be a bit surprising as well.
You haven't asked me as to why it happened. I have said at the time to look through the entrails. And everybody's got a different theory. Bernie Sanders felt the party probably wasn't far enough-- far enough down the progressive side. Others thought they went too far down that side.
Some thought that Biden should have left earlier. Some thought Kamala Harris wasn't a great candidate and all of that. I don't think any of those were the most salient features. I'd say if I had to separate the wheat from the chaff, I'd say, number one, incumbency. Every incumbent government on the planet has suffered sharp reverses in the last year.
I think people have come out of the pandemic. They're sick and tired of being sick and tired, high inflation, high interest rates, high cost of living. All of those affected every human being right at their pocketbook. So I think incumbent governments are all paying a price for that. We see it in Canada. We see it around the world.
I think secondly, the Democrats may have owned a half a dozen of the issues, many of which were very important, but the most salient issues were owned by the Republicans. And that was around the economy. The perception was the United States was not doing well, when, in fact, compared to the rest of the world, the United States has been doing very well. But the Republicans, over a period of a number of years, successfully created an impression of a failing America on the economy.
And then the really high profile issue that the Dems just whiffed on is immigration. And that really became a headline issue for people affecting people's perspective all across America. The Democratic Party under Biden at that time introduced some measures in the last six months, but they were really a day late and a pound late. And that issue became a very salient issue that I think became a ballot box issue for many people. So for those reasons, the public, as they often do, overcorrected and gave Trump a very strong mandate right across the board.
PETER HAYNES: Do you think that this trend of incumbents being beaten just about everywhere or seeing sharp reversals everywhere in the world is cyclical? Or is it possibly a secular change caused by access to social media and just the way that people litigate these elections now?
FRANK MCKENNA: That's an interesting question, Peter. And as I reflect, I would say probably more of the latter. I think that governments will still get some time, but they'll be ground down quite quickly. And it may be that one term is going to become more of the norm going forward. Because of the dramatic impact of social media and the ability to sway public opinion, it may be that governments are not going to have what we used to have.
We used to have a saying that one good term deserves another. That might be true for a second term, but trying to get a third or fourth term is going to be extraordinarily difficult. And I would say incumbent governments may now be under secular pressure and something that we haven't seen before.
PETER HAYNES: Well, that just means a lot more change in going forward. Speaking of change, Trump 2.0 hit the ground running ahead of its second term in office with a flurry of cabinet nominations. And not surprisingly, some of these picks are controversial and will test the resolve of the MAGA movement, in fact, already have tested the resolve of the MAGA movement and are going to struggle to get through Senate confirmation.
Let's go to RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services. When he was nominated, the vaccine makers all sold off 5% to 10%. At the conference a couple of weeks ago, our colleague Chris Krueger from the Washington Research Group had mentioned he did not expect RFK to be put in front of the Senate. And instead, he would take a different role inside of the government that wasn't going to need to go through the confirmation. Do you think that RFK Jr. can survive confirmation?
FRANK MCKENNA: I think that Trump-- if he had continue with Matt Gaetz, I think Gaetz would have been turned down by the Senate. But it might have given Trump a little bit of leverage with the Senate to say, OK, you've turned him down. I accept that, but get my other people through. So this probably makes RFK's run a little bit more difficult. In many ways, the RFK Jr. appointment is more dangerous and provocative than Matt Gaetz. It's got more ability to do serious harm.
On the one hand, he's not all wrong in talking about food safety and nutrition. There's no doubt that we are not receiving or consuming the most nutritious food. The problem with that is that that's probably where he will get the most opposition. The food lobby, and the members who represent them, have some pretty strong views.
But the more dangerous area for him is around some of his very strong views about vaccines, and for that matter, fluoride. Although the jury is divided on fluoride, I think the more prevalent scientific opinion is that fluoride and water really does help dental health. But that one is one that he has strong views on.
But the more serious one is the vaccine skepticism. And should he discourage the drug makers from continuing the excellent work that they're doing on creating quicker and safer vaccines, that would be a negative. Or if we were to reach a crisis and he were to discourage people from vaccinating, that would be downright dangerous.
An example that people will be mentioning is Samoa. It had a major debate around the issue of vaccination for measles. He went to Samoa, not with the vaccine skeptics there, encouraged their work. And the end result was that Samoa ended up having a measles epidemic that killed over 70 young people. These are serious matters.
Even in Canada right now, we are having a measles epidemic. And it's in the community of unvaccinated children that this is taking place. So if you're not completely responsible and responding to scientific opinion on issues like vaccine, that actually could be very, very dangerous to a population. So I think it'll be borderline. There will be people that will challenge him on the scientific evidence, and he'll have to go through a very rigorous test on that.
But he also-- unless Trump gets away with his gimmick of not doing FBI background checks, which has been done now for the last 50 years, he may be challenged on other matters as well. There's a lot of moral hazard around RFK Jr. It was only a few months ago that he ended up breaking up a relationship because he became involved with a sexting situation with a reporter. And he may have a number of areas where he'll be under attack. So that one would be problematic, absolutely problematic.
PETER HAYNES: Well, you mentioned sexual misconduct. So the next candidate that is in the crosshairs, I think, is Pete Hegseth, who is a Fox News host and former Army National Guard. He was nominated as Secretary of Defense.
That was a pick that drew some outsized criticism given Hegseth's lack of experience in military leadership and also the fact that he was not that forthcoming in his background check about a past allegation of sexual misconduct. There is some speculation that the transition team is looking at alternatives on this position as well. Are you expecting Hegseth to get put forward or will there likely be a change for this nomination as well.
FRANK MCKENNA: The qualifications-- the top qualifications by far here is fealty to Donald Trump. He had made the mistake the last time of putting a few people in his cabinet who turned on him when they thought that he was acting irrationally. He's not making that mistake this time. Absolute total blind loyalty is the first criteria for all of these picks. Most of them are thinly qualified, to say the least, but they are extraordinarily loyal.
I should say that there are some who are well qualified. In his case, his qualifications are very thin for the job. A lot of military veterans would be aghast at an appointment of that nature. But people are aghast at some of the rhetoric anyway coming out about the idea of court-martialing anybody that was involved from the withdrawal from Afghanistan or firing any general that was a believer in diversity and inclusion.
So I would say that he qualifies on the loyalty test. And I think that he's got enough support that he probably could get through the Senate, depending on how messy it gets around his sexual misconduct. He's had a bit of a history of cheating. And in this case, he had an allegation that was very serious. And it ended up getting settled with a big payment from him to the accuser. So if that's disqualifying, then he'd be disqualified.
But quite frankly, Trump would have a hard time finding that to be a disqualifying gate because of his own experience. So that one is a little more likely to get through. And again, he's what Trump likes. He's a Fox News guy. In this case, he's a Fox News host in FOX & Friends.
There's another FOX Business host in cabinet in Labor. And he likes these on-air people because they communicate well. The other one, by the way, that is going to suffer some sharp questioning and is thinly qualified is Tulsi Gabbard. And she's the National Intelligence director, even though she has no intelligence background at all.
And she is an open sympathizer of Putin and has taken the Russia's side in the Russia-Ukraine war, and has also been to Syria and met with Assad there in the midst of a lot of his atrocities against his own people. So anybody in the intelligence community is aghast that we would be sharing information with her. But again, she's a Trump loyalist, and she may be able to escape through on that basis.
PETER HAYNES: OK, so let's move on to non-cabinet appointments. Elon Musk, his influence clearly on the Trump team is outsized as he seems to be fused at the hip with the President-elect. And it seems that way for at least the last couple of months.
While Musk is not being put in front of the Senate for confirmation, he did get an important role as co-head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. It's hard to argue with the need for someone to cut the red tape in government, but Musk has a day job. And I personally can't comprehend how he can juggle all the balls in his court and the appearance of conflict given his role as CEO of Tesla. Do you think Musk and his partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, will be successful? Or is this new department more for show than anything else?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I think it's for more than show because all of the commitments that Trump has made require either tax increases or expenditure reductions or a massive increase in the deficit. And it's probably going to be some of-- it's going to be two out of those three. I don't think there'll be any tax increases. In fact, the tax increases will go the other way.
So can he be successful? Well, first of all, I would agree with you. It's a good exercise for any government to do kind of a root and branch examination of every dollar that's spent. The problem we have with every government is that they build on the government before them. And so you embed all of that expenditure base, even though it may not be warranted. So it's good to go back to a zero balance and really examine everything.
So that's a good idea. And these are people who could be successful at it. Look, Elon Musk, whatever you might think about some of his more recent behavior, he's a genius at business. He's just an absolute genius. I think he could bring some value here.
Here's the problem, though. They have mused about finding several trillion dollars in savings, but that is just plain unrealistic. Most of the budget is protected. And when I say protected, it consists of military expenditures which will not be touched. And it consists of entitlements, which the president has said would not be touched, things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera.
So if you eliminate those, you're down to maybe 15% of the total budget that you can even look at. And if they talk about federal employees, here's the situation. The budget for federal employees is about $300 billion. That's out of a $6 trillion federal budget. That's only $300 billion per year.
Sounds like a lot of money, but it's a small percentage of that budget. So if you were to reduce it even by 25%, which would be absolutely dramatic, you would only reduce federal spending by about 1%. So bottom line is, you could tear the size of the public service in the United States all to hell and still end up with only a very small contribution against the overall size of the deficit.
So I think they will perform a valuable role. Some of what they do will be objectionable for a lot of citizens, including a lot of elected people. Some of it will be able to get through, but it will represent reasonably small savings in the great scheme of things.
PETER HAYNES: OK, so let's move on to another important cabinet position, one that is going to definitely be front and center early on here in the Trump administration. That's the position of Secretary of State. And in this case, Trump picked Marco Rubio, a choice that was actually considered a pretty reasonable choice given his experience in the Senate and his important roles on Senate committees.
Rubio is definitely going to have his hands full picking up global files in Russia, the Middle East, and China to name a few. Do you think he is up to the task? And how do you expect him to manage the important multilateral relationships that the United States has while wearing the America First flag?
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah, I think that he's one of the more responsible choices. He has a resume that supports his selection. He's been on the Foreign Policy Committee. He's been a candidate to be the leader of the party. He's been a long term Senator. He is a hawk on China particularly. And we can expect him to bring that orientation to the job. But that will be the general orientation of the government overall at any rate.
PETER HAYNES: So as we talk about these different cabinet appointments and some of the more controversial ones, this concept of recess appointments has come up a few times. And the Senate leader-- the new Senate leader, John Thune, is opposed to recess appointments, I believe. But I just don't even understand this concept, Frank, that they can recess and then he can throw through some appointments that don't have to go through the same confirmation process. Do you expect that Trump may attempt to do this regardless, or will Thune be able to block that?
FRANK MCKENNA: I think that Thune and the Senate will be able to block it. In a way, it totally neuters the Senate. They do have a constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to appointments. It would be a gross abrogation of their responsibility if they were to allow the president to just go ahead and make recess appointments that would result in zero scrutiny of candidates. I don't think the Senate will give that authority up. And I think Thune is enough of a traditionalist in the Senate that he would not want to see that happen.
PETER HAYNES: So as we think about the whole process for cabinet appointments in the US, I thought I'd get your perspective on whether you prefer the US model where essentially you can find the best person in the country to be the cabinet appointment, versus Canada or other parliamentary systems where cabinet appointments are given to elected officials. In your perfect world, which would you prefer, Frank?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I've often mused about the US system because it would give you a chance to get some super talent, but it's a different system. We have a parliamentary system, and it would be totally incongruous with the parliamentary system. And when I look at the Trump situation, I would say that our particular screening process works better.
Members have to get elected. That's quite a screen. They have to pass scrutiny by the press, by the public. They have to get elected into office. And so the chance of getting any total clunkers in there is reasonably small. Over the years, the US has been able to produce some terrific candidates by going with their process-- Jim Baker back in the Reagan and Nixon era, Bob Rubin in Clinton era, Rex Tillerson under Trump.
But they've had as many bad choices as good choices. And I think in Canada, we've maybe only had one or two. CD Howe would have been one. Not many others that have come that route. Almost all of ours-- in fact, 100%-- close to 100% have been elected. When I look at the front bench now, you may disagree with the government, and you might disagree with the prime minister. But it's hard to disagree with the quality of the people occupying the front bench.
And the same would have been-- I would have said for previous conservative administrations. So I think our two major political parties in Canada have been able to get people elected of very high quality, who have passed the screen of getting voted on by the public, and all of the other scrutiny that goes with being an elected person. So on balance, I would still prefer our system.
PETER HAYNES: OK, so as we move on to the geopolitical hotspots, it appears as though the situation in Russia-Ukraine is going to be front and center. And there is a lot to unpack in this conflict just in the two weeks post the US election. First up was the rogue call to Putin by lame duck German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who just lost control of his local parliament and then decided he would preemptively insert himself into the peace efforts in that war.
Then you had President Biden respond to the arrival of North Korean troops in Ukraine by giving permission for Ukraine to fire US-made, long-range missiles into Russia, which prompted Putin to lower the bar for use of nuclear weapons. Clearly, there's a lot of posturing going on, but it's a tense situation.
In an article on Bloomberg earlier this week, Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said, quote, "The current situation offers Putin a significant temptation to escalate. This would allow both Putin and Trump to blame Biden and serve as a premise for direct talks." Stanovaya went on to say that Putin may be trying to convince Western Allies to choose between nuclear conflict and settlement on Putin's terms. I ask you, Frank, are we nearing the end game for the war in Ukraine? And does it end with one meeting between Trump and Putin?
FRANK MCKENNA: I think we're nearing the end game. I don't agree with the binary choice between nuclear conflict and settlement on Putin's terms. I think for the Republicans controlling the US now, I don't think that they quake in fear of nuclear conflict here. I think what bothers them is the money that's going to the Ukraine, the large amounts of money that's being paid out. And they would really like, in all likelihood, to see the world settle down because a lot of the inflation in the world has been fueled by oil prices, et cetera, as a result of this war.
But we have to bear in mind what the United States does in this war is extremely material. One of the reasons why Ukraine is on its back foot is that for many, many really important months, the Republican Congress held up aid to Ukraine and allowed the Russians to overrun a lot of their positions. So without the United States' full-throated support of the war effort in Ukraine, it will be very difficult for the Ukraine to prevail.
So I think the conditions are somewhat fertile for the war to get settled, giving these 300-kilometer range weapons, both from the UK and from-- the Storm Shadows from the UK and the weapons from the United States probably means that Russia is more under the gun. So that creates a bit of deal pressure on that side.
And on the other side, the US is probably implicitly threatening Ukraine we're going to be withdrawing our financial support, which puts a lot of deal tension on that side. So I think the conditions are increasingly fortuitous to create some kind of a settlement. Russia would have moved its positions forward aggressively knowing that we're getting close to that end game.
The price they've paid is beyond comprehension. Over a thousand troops a day killed or injured. But they've been prepared to pay that price. And Ukraine's foray into Kursk inside Russia and grabbing territory there, I think, really is meant as a big bargaining chip for this eventual end state. So I think that we will see a resolution of this, probably not in a single phone call.
But a single phone call may get the process started of creating a table at which the party has come to. And it'll involve complex negotiations around the land base but also around how you enforce-- how you create a demilitarized zone, how you enforce a buffer zone, and Ukraine's entry into either the EU or into NATO, all of these and more reparations, et cetera. So it's not-- a phone call won't settle in a day, but I do think we're edging closer to the end state.
PETER HAYNES: Well, we can hope for the sake of everyone involved in that conflict that it happens as soon as possible. So as we turn to issues that impact Canada, it's no secret that Prime Minister Trudeau's relationship with Trump in the first term was not the strongest. But truth be told that every other global leader felt the same way in terms of the relationship with the US, say, for some of the dictators in the world.
It's because Trump is so direct with his America First bombast. And this is what the American people that voted for him want. They want him to win every single trade. With this in mind, how do you recommend Prime Minister Trudeau and his leadership team approach the US in Trump's second term?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I think it'll be the equivalent of Reagan's "trust, but verify." Try to make a deal. We'll try to find compromises. But at the end, it'll be tit for tat. If we can end up making a deal, we'll have to counteract with tariffs, which of course will be targeted against specific constituencies in the United States. So it gets ugly. But there'll be a really strong effort by Canada to negotiate.
Quite frankly, we have so much at stake. 75% of our trade goes to the United States. Over a third of our GDP depends on trade with the United States. 400,000 people cross the border every day. So we've got a lot at stake here.
And the United States has a lot at stake as well. We're the biggest buyer of all of the US goods, bigger than the entire European put together. We buy more goods from the United States across one border crossing than the entire country of Japan. So we're a massive market for US products as well. And so both countries have skin in the game. We'll just have to try to find out their vulnerabilities as they will be probing ours.
We have two essential weak spots that the US will exploit under Trump. One is that we do have a balance of trade imbalance. And that has escalated. It used to be fairly-- and a trillion dollars, it's still really small. But it used to be minuscule. But in the last year or two, we've increased our energy exports to the United States to the point now where 54% of all of their imports are Canadian.
And with the opening of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, even though that pipeline gets oil to the Pacific Ocean, it's not generally going to Asia. It's going down the coast of California. So we have opened up a new market. But unfortunately, it's not diversifying away from the United States. So as a result, we do have a trade imbalance. And Trump is going to go through countries really in terms of priority around their trade imbalance.
Number two, of course, is NATO and our obligations in NATO. We have to figure out how quickly we can ramp up to 2% and whether or not we're going to ramp up to 2%. On the other hand, the Americans have to understand that virtually every dollar we spend on defense we spend in the United States of America. So that will be where the game is.
On the other hand, we will try to bring some snowballs to our side of the fight as well. Critical minerals would be one of those, 31 critical minerals in Canada. The United States wants them protected against China, et cetera, and available to them. So that would be one.
AI, an area where we have a very large capability. And I would say Arctic sovereignty, where we have been aggressively moving to to protect our interests and in fact, the United States' interest in the Arctic. So we're not without cards to play.
And the energy card itself, we send 4.3 million barrels a day of oil into the United States and 10% of their gas. So anything that would impede that flow would end up costing the American consumers more. Both sides will have their cards to play before it's all resolved. It'll be chaotic and ugly.
PETER HAYNES: And there's probably going to be some saber-rattling very early in the Trump administration about USMCA. So let's just talk briefly about that. There's more and more Canadian leaders across this country, including Doug Ford and Danielle Smith, that have joined the chorus of Republicans that suggest that China is using Mexico as a back door into the US tariff-free through USMCA. Do you agree that perhaps Canada and the US maybe should consider negotiating Mexico out of this trilateral free-trade agreement?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, legally, I think that is a hard thing to do. And in a perfect world, it's good to have this trilateral trade agreement with all three parties, represents the biggest trading pact in the world. The problem is is that Mexico has not, in my view, and said it on this podcast many times, has not been playing fair. And so Canada-- Doug Ford, Danielle Smith, and actually Chrystia Freeland saying this as well, I think we're justified in pointing out that Mexico has been a bit of a bad actor.
Environmental standards, labor standards have always been an issue in Mexico. And now they've really accelerated this reach out to bring Chinese companies into Mexico and send their goods into the United States, which is infuriating the Americans because it's a back door way for China to export into the United States. So we've got to deal with that issue.
And of course, Mexico's also been the source of a lot of the illegal immigration that's taken place in the United States. Mexico seems quite unfazed by Trump and believe they've got lots of bargaining power. And they've got a huge number of big US companies in Mexico producing goods and shipping them back. And they believe that they will be able to lobby the United States effectively.
I don't know. I do know that we're going to have to really have our head on a swivel as these negotiations take place because Mexico's tried to undermine us in the last negotiation. And probably they'll do it this time. And I think that we've got to be very clearheaded in the way in which we negotiate and times we will be probably an ally of the United States in negotiating with Mexico, trying to deal with some of these more egregious practices.
PETER HAYNES: So, Frank, I want to ask a protocol question. We have an opposition party in Canada that most people assume will be the next leadership at some point within the next year, and that would be the Conservatives. Would you expect that Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservatives, would be spending time with Trump and his leadership team prior to his election in Canada?
FRANK MCKENNA: The kind of jurisprudence on this is pretty thin. Some leaders take visits from opposition leaders. Some don't. It would be a bit unusual for Trump to receive Poilievre. It would not be unusual for Poilievre to be able to meet with the US ambassador, for example, and with other state officials or elected officials in the United States.
But it's possible that Trump would go far enough as to actually entertain Pierre Poilievre because he's an unconventional politician. Generally speaking, we don't tend to do that because we have to deal with the person who's there. And it becomes awkward doing that if you're also dealing with the opposition leader.
PETER HAYNES: So at the conference, one of the conversations that we had during the Rona Ambrose-Chris Krueger geopolitical discussion was around the fact that-- and we're getting about when Canadians are going to the polls, about the fact that Rona argued that Canadians did not elect the Liberal Party as its leadership party and then have that turn out to be the Liberals plus the NDPs in some sort of supply and confidence agreement that we know is broken now.
But we see even today that the NDP has an affordability issue that they're putting in front of the government. And Trudeau is now suggesting that there's going to be a whole bunch of additional spending or reduction in taxes for certain people in the country. And we all agree those are probably really good things to do.
But Rona's point was we didn't elect our government this way. We elected the Liberal Party as a Minority Leader. I'm curious, Frank, if you share Rona's views with respect to the fact that the Liberals and NDP partnership is not what Canadians elected? And when do you think we will go to the polls?
FRANK MCKENNA: I've got huge respect for Rona. I don't quite agree with that. We've had minority governments in Canada ever since Confederation, including the Harper government, and they've always relied on opposition parties to keep them in power. Sometimes that's formalized in terms of a supply agreement, like we've recently witnessed, but not any longer. Sometimes it's informal.
But that's the way the system does work. So I think when you elect a minority government, you basically are electing the party with the most votes plus whatever party will end up supporting them. And as a result of that, we end up getting situations which I don't particularly subscribe to the spending, which the NDP party tends to promote.
But that is the bargain. When you elect a minority government, you're always going to have a second, third, or fourth party attempting to hold them to ransom for some issue or another. And that's been true for Conservative parties, Liberal parties as the case might be.
PETER HAYNES: So in terms of an election, are you thinking it's going to be the budget next year that will be the confidence vote that brings down the government? Or will we make it all the way to November? When is the deadline?
FRANK MCKENNA: That's interesting. I had thought that the latest government could stagger through would be in probably March or April when they bring down a budget, because I just can't for the life of me seeing a non-confidence motion failing at that time. But I've heard whispers out of the cabinet in Ottawa in the last week or two that they think there's a chance the NDP might even support them all the way through until next fall. And that would be, I guess, based on the NDP misfortunes in British Columbia, for example, where they had a very strong base and suffered serious reverses in the provincial election.
New Brunswick, where they basically were wiped out. So it would be that political motivation. And also, the government looks like it's turning on the spigots on programs that the NDP would almost certainly buy into. And so the NDP might be able to make the argument, well, look, we've got the government doing things that we think are good for Canadian people and, therefore, we support it. So there's an outside chance the government could stagger through until October. But I think the far larger likelihood is that we have an election triggered off the budget in the spring.
PETER HAYNES: Just interesting because it affects the calculus of our geopolitical relationships, including with the new Trump administration as it comes in here. So let's just finish up on the Blue Jays. Jon Heyman of The New York Post was suggesting that the Mets and the Blue Jays are the favorites to land.
Juan Soto, who is the coveted outfielder that everybody wants to sign in free agency. And he's going to cost a lot of money. In my opinion, the only way the Jays will get Soto is if we massively overpay. My question for you is would you overpay for Juan Soto? And why haven't the Jays signed Vladdy long term?
FRANK MCKENNA: I don't think you have to be gifted to guess there are only about four teams that could afford Soto. So we're one of those teams, and we know that he's already interviewed with the Jays. So I would say that we're in the running, but we are in the running for Ohtani as well. And sometimes it's not even a question of whether we match another bid. Sometimes it's location.
Ohtani clearly wanted to be in the West Coast and Los Angeles. And Soto may decide that he wants to be in the Big Apple for maximum exposure. So I would say this. One, I think that Vladdy is the heart and soul of the team. He's not only a gifted athlete, but he's got a great personality. And he seems to love the city of Toronto, and he wants to play here. I think he should be the number one priority, signing him. And anything that would jeopardize that I think would be a negative.
Then secondly, we need to cast around Vladdy. So the Jays have to make a calculus. Are they prepared to spend the money on a Soto but also find a way to bring other strong players in that can supplement that crew? That's a difficult calculus. You might be able to get a deal like Ohtani where Vladdy or Soto would say, look, I'll back and load the money that I take so that you can build a championship team and put other great players on it.
That would be very unselfish-- and selfish too because it would give you a better chance of being on a championship team. I don't know if they can make that kind of a deal. If they could, it would be a chance. If you could get Soto, I think you got to go for-- you got to go for the brass ring. You got to do everything you can to create a supporting cast around them that would get you a world championship.
You're really betting the farm. And so you got to make sure that you're successful on that. Would it be overpaying? Yes, but it would be exciting. If you had two genuine superstars like that on your team, boy, it would be electric. It would truly be very exciting.
PETER HAYNES: You could argue we have three. Bichette had a down year. He's a superstar. He should be a superstar.
FRANK MCKENNA: So let me stop you on that because I've been remiss in not talking enough about Bichette. I think Bichette one stage I would have thought he was more valuable than Vladdy, and he might be. He's an electric player. He's got all the tools, uninjured. I think he is a franchise player. So yes.
PETER HAYNES: I think the reason you say that, Frank, or the reason you didn't mention him was because you know Vladdy loves Toronto. We all know that. You're not sure about Bichette. We're not all sure whether he wants to be here. And I think that affects how we look at him. If we knew he wanted to be here, I think we would-- we'd feel more strongly.
Here's another name I want to throw at you, Frank, and just as we finish up here. And that's Roki Sasaki, who's being posted from Japan and is a phenom. And he's very young. And so I just thought here's an opportunity. Everyone says he's going to go to the Dodgers because he's buddies with Ohtani and Yamamoto. Or he'll go to the Padres where he's friends with Yu Darvish.
But why not-- as you've said before, why doesn't he own Canada? There's 125,000 Japanese-Canadians. There's only 412,000 Japanese-Americans. You imagine if he had all of Canada cheering for him, all the Japanese-Canadians, and then a lot of Japanese back in his country.
The reason Sasaki is not going to go to the Dodgers is because he's not going to get all the endorsements. They're all going to go to Ohtani. But if he had Canada, his endorsement opportunities here would be phenomenal. So I would love to see the Jays-- and he doesn't cost much money because of a really weird system of how they post.
Maybe we are secretly going after him. We don't hear the name Toronto mentioned with Sasaki. And this all won't happen until January. But that's the one I want to watch for, Frank. If we could somehow snag Sasaki, I think that'd be a really interesting situation and bolster our rotation.
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. Look, I love the idea. And we do have something to sell. We're probably the most international city in all of Major League Baseball. And a star like that would be a star just not for a city but for an entire country. Any of these names would be well loved if they come here.
But again, I still am a bit of a doubting Thomas about the way we play the game, coaching management, et cetera. That's a whole different issue. But I'd hate to have us with a bunch of superstars and still be a boring team.
PETER HAYNES: It's funny you mentioned that because I read somewhere that Sasaki had a real problem with his general manager in Japan as the GM was very public in ripping him when he wasn't performing. And that that's one of the keys to his decision making, which team he goes to-- stability of management and whether he likes the GM manager relationship.
So I'm not sure that we're going to pass that test based on what you read in the paper about our management team. So thanks, Frank. I know we'll come back in another life here and be baseball podcasters. That'll be something we'll do in our next career. But till we chat again, we'll see you again in December.
FRANK MCKENNA: Thank you, Peter. Never dull.
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