Frank McKenna Live

FRANK MCKENNA: There are not many moments like this. You witnessed history in the making, where a sitting president actually stepped down rather than run again.
PETER HAYNES: Welcome to the July 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.
Now, today, we're taping in front of a live audience of TD colleagues, many of whom are interns and associates who may not know you very well, Frank. So why don't you give us a fast look at your resume. From the farm in New Brunswick to TD here today, tell us about your career.
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, thank you, Peter. And thank you, everybody, for coming out. Anybody who comes to listen to me is very welcome in my books because it's a declining [INAUDIBLE].
PETER HAYNES: We pay them.
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. So I'm sort of your Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story-- the rags part of it, not the richest part of it. Like Bill Clinton once told me, he said, "Every American president aspires to grow up in a log cabin that he built himself." Well, I was lucky enough to literally be in a log cabin growing up, and it gave me a big edge on life.
I grew up in a farm family with 10 in the family and a lot of hungry mouths to feed. And I can't honestly tell you we were poor and hungry. We weren't. We were rich because we had food off the land, and we had each other, and we all worked. And it just seemed that was the only life we knew. And it seemed pretty good.
When I was young, not lucky, but my grandfather died, who lived on the farm next door, and I was taken in by my grandmother because she needed somebody to look after her. But she really looked after me. And she really jacked me up into being a big believer in politics and education and being ambitious and so on.
She really created a lot of ambition in me, which I probably wouldn't have had otherwise. And so I went on to university and then went on to Queen's UMB. When I was at Queen's, I was about to do my PhD in political science. And then I read a book that transformed my life. It's called The Vertical Mosaic by John Porter.
And then, it listed the backgrounds of everybody who was in politics. None of them were political scientists. They were all lawyers. So I immediately switched my career path from political science to law and practiced law. And I was lucky enough then to catch some world-class cases that garnered a lot of attention.
And then I was lucky-- and that's one of the things that has characterized my life. And if you're lucky, it will yours as well. I found that all of my successes right at the junction of hard work and luck. If you don't work hard enough, you don't get the luck. But if you aren't lucky, sometimes things don't work out as well.
So I ran for politics. And at the time I ran, there was a bit of a vacuum in our party, the Liberal Party. And so I ended up very quickly becoming the leader. Then there was a vacuum in the province. People were tired of the guy that was there. I ended up running and winning. And in fact, we won all the seats, 58 seats.
Then, I ended up having a magical political life. I survived a plane crash. I survived a Colombian attempt to kidnap a political leader in New Brunswick to release hostages and survived all of that and was able to leave after 10 years on the very day that I started a political life 10 years earlier and then went on.
I was lucky enough to have offers in the private sector. And then a prime minister called me and asked me to be an ambassador, and I did that. And then Ed Clark of TD came calling. And Washington said, we want you at TD. And I joined the bank. And I couldn't be happier. It's the longest job I've ever had. And I've enjoyed it enormously.
It's a great bank, and it's allowed me to do what I like doing, which is being with people, servicing clients, and helping to create new business opportunities. So it's been-- for me, life has been magical.
PETER HAYNES: Well, Canada's loss because I think everyone would agree we wish you had have been our prime minister or at least run for prime minister someday. Canada's loss is definitely TD bank's gain. And for that, we're all very grateful that you're with us at the bank here, coming up on 20 years. And we enjoy every day we get to spend with you.
So for those of you-- Frank was talking about some of the cases that he was involved in when he was a litigator. For those of you interested in knowing a little bit about some of the cases he's referring to, you can find that on his Wikipedia page.
But I would encourage you to look at the case of The Fighting Fisherman, Yvon Durelle. And he defended Yvon and got him off of a murder charge. It's a very interesting case. And I think Yvon Durelle was famous for being the only person-- he fought George Chuvalo, didn't he? Wasn't that his famous case.
FRANK MCKENNA: He fought all the greats. He was the British Empire Heavyweight champion. And he's famous for the Night of the Long Counts. He fought Archie Moore, knocked him down three times. And the last time he knocked him down, he thought he was knocked out. And the referee gave him a few extra seconds to get off the canvas. And he came back. Archie Moore won on points in 12 rounds. So it's a pretty famous fight.
PETER HAYNES: Yeah, well, so I'll encourage everyone to. That's your homework for the day. So our plan today for this podcast is for me to start off with a few questions that I've prepared in advance here and then to let our audience take it from there. We do have some live mics that we'll be passing around. And nothing's off limits. You can ask any questions.
I can tell you, having interviewed Frank now 53 months, there's never been a question that I've prepared that Frank has said, I'm not going to talk about that. He's answered every single question that I've ever put in front of him. And I'm sure that will continue here today.
So I want to start, Frank, with clearly the most important and stunning news, which has now been germinated for about one week. And that is the decision by President Joe Biden not to seek reelection. At what point in this journey did you think the decision was inevitable? And what do you say to critics that suggest the process for anointing Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket was undemocratic?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I'll go to the second part of that first. I don't think it was undemocratic at all. She was on the ticket with Joe Biden. She was the Vice President. And she was on the ticket to be reelected. As part of that ticket, she was the inheritor of the money they'd raised, which was about $90 million.
And not only that, she wasn't really anointed. Anybody could have run for it. It was wide open and a wide open process. But it turned out that everybody coalesced around her. I don't think it was inevitable. I don't think it was anti-democratic. I thought that Joe Biden was done the night I watched the debate. I couldn't watch more than the first part of the debate. It was embarrassing.
This is a man who's had 50 years of public service to his credit, who lost his wife and daughter because he was in Washington doing business-- and they were in a car accident-- who lost a son, Beau, who went overseas and fought in Iraq, who's given enormously of himself, and who I thought was a very effective president under the circumstances, considering that his opponent was somebody who denied that he'd ever won the election and tried to take the election away from him.
So I thought in the face of that that he did a very fine job. But he clearly had lost a lot of capacity, as, in baseball parlance, as one former prime minister told me, he's lost some of the zip on his fastball. And that night, whether it was just a bad night or not, it was clear that he had deteriorated to the point where the idea of having him as president for four more years to me was very difficult to conceive.
So I thought what he did-- and people told me it was inevitable he was going to leave when he saw the magnitude of the concern around him. In order to give a little balance here, I'm going to read you a couple of Twitter comments. The first is from President Biden. "I revere this office, but I love my country more."
In other words, I would love to be president, but I care too much about the country. Then he goes on to say, "The great thing about America is that here kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands."
These words, I'm emphasizing them because they'll be quoted in decades to come in the way in which he went out. Because not since Lyndon Johnson has an incumbent president left. So here are some other words from somebody else.
"The Biden-Harris administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for democracy. It was my great honor to do so." Then, "I can't believe it. They've turned crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of the United states into a hero. He was pushed out of power like a dog. And look what the radical left is able to do."
Next, this all pretty well the same night-- "Crooked Joe Biden's Oval Office speech was barely understandable and so bad." This is what we call being gracious when somebody steps down after four years in power.
The next one, "Crooked Joe Biden and lying Kamala Harris are a great embarrassment to America. There's never been a time like this." And the final one-- "Biden never had COVID. He's a threat to democracy."
So I just want to tell you about this because there are not many moments like this. You've witnessed history in the making where a sitting president actually stepped down rather than run again because he felt that the perception of his incapacity was enough to pass victory to the other side.
And I thought it was a very unselfish act and deserved a very gracious response. And that's what he got, generally speaking but not universally. So I was not surprised that he stepped down. I thought it was the right thing to do.
PETER HAYNES: Were you surprised that the party coalesced around the Harris ticket as quickly as they did? And who do you have pegged-- I know she's going to announce later this week likely her running mate. Who do you have pegged as the horse that will win the running mate race?
FRANK MCKENNA: Yes. I want to make it clear here that I did not see this coming at all. I saw Biden leaving. I had thought that Kamala Harris-- I'm being very honest here-- was a bit of a flawed candidate. She'd been quite unpopular as a vice president and had not received a huge outpouring of support. And all of a sudden, this happened.
And it was almost like everybody who didn't want Trump back as president coalesced around her. So I've never seen anything like it. I don't know if anybody would have predicted it. But she had 44,000 of her sorority sisters on a Zoom call within hours. She did a podcast in which she raised $100 million. She's now raised $200 million.
We've seen young people and women and people of color galvanize around her in a way that I never, ever thought possible. Is it enough to guarantee victory? Not necessarily. But it was an amazing event. Again, one that I want you to think about, it will be in the history of the country the way in which all of that came about.
For vice president, that's a very interesting thing. Normally, the vice presidential candidate is completely irrelevant. As one vice president said, it's not worth a pitcher of warm spit. It's an analogy, which I don't like to think about much-- but it's not worth a pitcher of warm spit. Another one said, you spend all your time waiting for a phone call to tell you the president's dead. What kind of a job is that?
So not usually worth anything until it is. And we saw John McCain, who is a very, very honorable man, make a terrible mistake when he picked Sarah Palin, and she ended up embarrassing that ticket. And Dan Quayle ended up also being an embarrassment as the Vice President.
The rumor was that the Secret Service-- if anything happened to the president-- the Secret Service had orders to shoot Dan Quayle second so he couldn't end up becoming the president. So those were bad choices.
In the case of Trump, he made a deliberate decision, which was very unconventional. Rather than shoring up a weakness, like a state or, because he's a man having a woman or a person of color, or a person from a different geography, he chose, apparently on the advice of Donald Jr., to double down on Donald Trump.
So what we have is Donald Trump II. We have MAGA-lite. And so JD Vance is everything that Trump is. Only he's a young, angry white man, not an old, angry white man. A lot of people were curious as to why that took place.
But it took place because Trump felt the election was in the bag. And what he had to do was to energize that base of supporters. And he could do that by getting a younger version of himself. And that strategy looked pretty good until, number one, Kamala Harris became the candidate for the Democrats, and, number two, people started researching JD Vance and found out what he stood for.
And they found out that he was really an ultra-conservative, angry, white person. And one of the things that he did, which I think will haunt him to this day-- he did an interview two or three years ago with Sean Hannity at Fox News. He said that-- he criticized Kamala Harris, Alexandria Cortez, and Pete Buttigieg, the three of them, as being angry, childless cat women.
And Pete Buttigieg is a gay candidate and has a partner, and the two of them actually have children. And Kamala Harris actually has two stepchildren. And those stepchildren were up the next day posting and saying, how could you say something so mean about a couple of cutie-pies like us?
And the real mother of those children, the biological mother, came out and said, one of the hardest things to do in this life is to be a stepmother, and she's the perfect stepmother. And if that wasn't enough, Jennifer Aniston came out and said, I've tried everything that I can try to get pregnant, and I can't. And that's why I have cats, and why I miss not having children.
And then the Swifties got into it and said, our Swiftie has three cats, and she doesn't have any children. Is she an angry, white, cat person? Anyway, so JD Vance, to try to mop up in aisle 7, he did an interview with Megyn Kelly. And he said, look, I didn't mean to criticize cats. Well, that didn't exactly clean up the mess.
So he started off on a pretty bad foot and hasn't done much since. So bottom line is, what looked like a fairly safe choice for Trump now has the beginnings of maybe being a major liability but at least not shoring anything up. So Kamala Harris is going to do the opposite in my view because she needs to. And that is to shore up something.
And the three or four major candidates for that are Roy Cooper, who's the governor of North Carolina. North Carolina has 17 Electoral College votes and is what's called a purple state, meaning it could go either way. So that probably represents value.
The second choice would be the astronaut Mark Kelly, who's a former military guy, a former hero as an astronaut, and is the Senator from Arizona, which has electoral 11 Electoral College votes and is definitely a swing state and who is married to Gabby Giffords, who was almost killed by an assassination attempt and makes him an extraordinarily strong advocate on gun control. So he's another potential candidate.
And the third one is Josh Shapiro, who's the governor of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has 19 Electoral College votes and is one of the really true swing states in the United States and may very well decide the election. He's Jewish as well, which may provide some support there because the Democrats are more closely associated with the other side of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and Hamas.
So all of that to say, he would reinforce another wing. So those are probably the three choices. Of those three, I would probably go with Shapiro because he would have the most Electoral College votes. And he would help cement the blue wall, the blue wall being Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And Michigan's got really powerful number of votes as well.
But Michigan, if the Democrats are going to win, Michigan should be in the bag, similarly with Minnesota because their governor is being looked at as well. So I would look at states. I wouldn't even go with North Carolina because I think it's more likely to be in the loss column. But if I were her, I would really double down on picking up a valuable constituency to help win the election.
PETER HAYNES: My Republican friends in the state of Pennsylvania worry about Josh Shapiro as a candidate against--
FRANK MCKENNA: He's a real populist. And he won handily in his election. But there's no doubt that her choice will not be to double down on her. It'll be to double down on somebody who's not her-- represents [INAUDIBLE].
PETER HAYNES: Well, you spent some time talking about JD Vance. I'm sure one of the most popular Netflix movies is Hillbilly Elegy, if any of you folks have seen that. I would encourage you. If you want to learn more about his background growing up in rural Ohio, that's been a must-watch for people wanting to get to know him a bit better.
I know you spent some time mentioning the Secret Service, and they were in the news here for some of the wrong reasons. And I want us move over to President Trump here and talk about some of the events that have occurred in the last few weeks of his campaign.
But lost in the shuffle of Trump's election campaign and the noise around the assassination attempt was actually a very important decision that was made by the judge that's overseeing the documents case in Florida.
After hearing several appeals from the Trump defense team on various aspects of the case-- and that defense team threw literally everything against the wall-- Judge Aileen Cannon actually bit on one of those rulings and decided that the special counsel, Jack Smith, was actually unlawfully appointed and lacked the authority to bring the case, the documents case. And just like that, the case died.
My understanding of special counsel appointments is that the process that was followed for Smith's appointment had precedent, although one legal scholar I spoke to suggested that her ruling was actually based on statute and that, technically, the Senate needs to approve his appointment. What's your take on this case and the last couple of weeks of Trump's life?
FRANK MCKENNA: To start with, I'm going to go back to the assassination attempt because, again, when you're reviewing history, you're going to say, wow, I actually watched that on TV. I still remember where I was when Kennedy was assassinated or Robert Kennedy after Jack Kennedy.
So these are momentous events. And I thought that Trump gained enormous respect from Americans. Whether one agrees with Trump or not, ideologically, he is a real showman, and he is very charismatic. And to be able to get up off the floor and say, fight, fight, fight the way he did, that's an iconic picture that will be discussed forever. I think that the assassination attempt earned him huge favor with Americans and sympathy.
What annoys me really is the way in which the legal system has been manipulated. There are a number of cases against him. And those cases are based on, in almost every case, independent counsel with independent judges making decisions.
In the case of the January 6 insurrection, I'll call it, because it was an insurrection, hundreds, thousands of people put in jail as a result of either guilty pleas or, in most cases, trials. And Trump is now suggesting he would pardon many of those people. Well, that's an affront to the justice system.
But he's been able to use the legal system successfully in two ways-- one, hiring just armies of lawyers who are delaying, delaying, delaying, and also taking advantage of a lot of Trump-appointed judges who, it would seem, have put their fingers on the scale.
Supreme Court of the United states, which is heavily Republican, have showed their colors in the case of immunity, I think, by essentially delaying it and pushing it back for an adjudication of the immunity arguments in such a way that it will go beyond the election. The same with the Georgia case; it will get stretched out beyond the election.
Almost every poll says that, if Trump is convicted of something, that would weigh on people's decision as to whether to vote for him or not. But in almost every case, they will not get a right to look at that until after the election. The Florida case is the strongest case against Trump.
Essentially, he took classified documents, including nuclear secrets, down to his place in Florida, had them lying in the bathroom and all over the house, showing them to people, probably trying to build himself up, saying, look, these are all the documents I dealt with when I was the president.
So that is pretty black and white. You either have the documents, or you don't. You're allowed to have them, or you don't. Case closed. But he ended up getting a judge that he appointed who has bent over backwards to try to thwart this case every step of the way. At the beginning of it, she tried to appoint a special master. And the court of appeal ruled that over and basically scorched her, saying, how could you be so stupid as to rule that?
And now, she's basically taken an argument that only Clarence Thomas, who is arguably the most biased member of the Supreme Court of the United states, threw out as an argument in one of those cases, but nobody else bit on, and used that to get rid of the special counsel in basically saying the documents case has no merit because the special counsel is not a meritorious appointment.
That is completely contrary to the view of almost every expert and all the jurisprudence. United States versus Nixon was decided 9 to 0 by the Supreme Court of the United States. And in that case, they ruled that the special prosecutor actually had standing contrary to the argument.
And she picked that part of the case out and ruled that what we call in law obiter dictum, which means not central to the case, and therefore, it could be disregarded. She went out of her way to cherry-pick the jurisprudence to try to find an argument. And most legal experts think that it will be laughed out of court when it gets to a higher court.
But in the meantime, this will not be disposed of before the election. And Trump is going to skate on that as well. Remember, his intention, if he wins being president, is basically to get rid of all of these prosecutions against him in such a way that they'll never see the light of day. So delay is a very, very good tactic for his lawyers.
PETER HAYNES: I know we're all wondering what dictator for a day will actually mean. I'm sure our audience is going to come back to the US when we open it up for general questions. But I want to spend a moment switching over to Canada and focus on President Biden's decision to admit, quote, "it was time."
And it has some Canadians suggesting that our Prime Minister Trudeau might consider following Joe Biden's lead. In fact, the Washington Post ran a feature story on this topic last Friday. Frank, you are the perfect person to speak about legacy, given your decision to step down from the New Brunswick premiership at 10 years to the day as you explained earlier in this discussion.
I want to read to you a letter to the editor of The Globe and Mail that appeared last week in light of the Biden decision, quote, "The majority of politicians have strong egos and believe they are the only ones that can lead. One rare exception was Frank McKenna, former Premier of New Brunswick. Early on as premier, he said he would not stay beyond 10 years.
He led his party to three consecutive majority governments. Yet, as he reached the 10-year mark, still with a high approval rating, he stepped down. Justin Trudeau is in his ninth year, and his approval ratings are dismal. Yet, he refuses to read the tea leaves. Despite it all, his government has done a lot of good things. But in this environment, most people would be hard-pressed to name one," end of quote.
That was sent in by Peter Belliveau from Moncton. Do you see a parallel between the Biden decision and Trudeau's plight? And what would you say to the prime minister if he asked for your advice on next steps?
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. So it's an interesting question, and I'll give an honest answer. I think that Trudeau will leave. I think that what Biden did will be influential because what he's seeing is, Biden, who's a good friend as well, leave and receive adulation from figures all over the world and respect from people for doing that and for the work that he had accomplished in his four years, except for so and so.
But otherwise, everybody was very gracious. And I think Trudeau is going to look at that and look at the fact that he has two by-elections coming up in Manitoba and in Montreal and then later in Halifax that all could go badly, and that he's already lost the election in St. Paul's in Toronto.
Put all that together, he's going to have a very restive caucus, a very restless cabinet, and a very restive electorate. So if I were him and I was 20 points behind and I was going to take my party right over Niagara Falls and destroy a lot of lives of a lot of people running for office or, alternatively, could give them a better chance by making a change of leadership, I would leave and do what I think is the right thing.
If he were to do that-- somebody was asking me the other day about his accomplishments-- and because Caroline Mulroney was in this morning. We had a good chat. And we had a chance to talk about the way her dad left-- when I say "left," when he was buried and had his funeral a couple of months ago-- it was a massive outpouring of affection and respect for him for the things that he had accomplished.
But that wasn't during his lifetime, and it wasn't during his time in office. It came about later. And I think if Trudeau were to leave, people would start thinking about what he'd accomplished. He got us through the pandemic. And that was not a breeze. We were last on the list in terms of procuring vaccine, ended up having the most vaccine in the world.
The United States had three times more people die per capita than Canada did. It was a difficult management job. He got us through that. He got us through the NAFTA negotiations with Trump, which was extraordinarily difficult, introduced National Child Care, which is an important social and business program, introduced the school lunch program, national dental care, pharmacy care.
So on a number of fronts, you could make an argument for him that he's got a body of work that should give him respect. And I think after he's gone and people have had a chance to cool down and let their anger vent and everything, people will say, well, yeah, he was a good prime minister. So if I were him, that's what I would do. I would leave, and I would spend time cementing my legacy and give the party a chance to regroup.
PETER HAYNES: Will he take a walk in the snow like his father?
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, if he does, it'll be too late. If he leaves, he's got to leave now so that a new leader could be in place quickly enough to re-vector the Liberal Party, make it a more centrist party, and introduce new policies. I talked to a number of the leadership candidates who all know that the only way they can win is to show some serious space between themselves and Justin Trudeau on a number of issues.
PETER HAYNES: I don't want to speculate on that announcement or when it might occur if it does. And then once it does occur, we'll certainly have a lot of chance to spend some time talking about the various people that could vector the Liberal Party to the middle and see where we go here in Canada.
So at this point, I wanted to open it up to the audience for questions. I have received a few questions via email in advance here, Frank, which I will weave into the discussion. But first, wanted to-- we have some mics in the room, so feel free just to put your hand up, and don't be shy. And once again, I will say any question you want to ask is good to go.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Thank you. Frank, you keep a pretty good Rolodex of current and former international leaders. Can you, obviously, on a no-names basis, really, what you've heard from some of them in your discussions over the last week with the events, whether it's the attempted assassination, whether it's the choice of Biden not to run again, the Harris news, et cetera-- what have you been hearing internationally?
FRANK MCKENNA: I've never seen the mood like what I've seen in the last two weeks. The whole world has turned upside down. I'll run through it quick. The UK was a blowout change of government after 14 years. Europe, the European elections, very anti-Europe.
France, they had a huge vote in the first election in France two weeks ago for the right-wing party. And then they have the follow-up, the second election. And it was a huge blowout for the left-wing party, but a repudiation in both cases of Macron.
In Iran, which doesn't get much attention, Pezeshkian was elected out of three running. He is the most liberal, pro-Western person running. He actually won the election. That doesn't get much attention because of everything else. But everybody's head is spinning. What does that mean for the world? Already, he's indicated he's more interested in reaching out to the West. That would be an amazing if that were to happen.
And then, on top of that, we have the Republican convention, which was a celebration of Republican values and everything else, and a huge boost for Trump, selecting the vice president, and then Biden resigning, and then Kamala Harris exciting everybody. Everybody's sitting there just saying, holy, you know what. What's going on?
So it's a really exciting period. And everybody that I talk to in every political theater is just saying, essentially, the honest thing, sure didn't see that coming. So I think heads are spinning. So we're starting to realize that it's a real topsy-turvy world, and just about anything can happen-- just shows the volatility.
And a lot of that is fueled by something that all of you will understand, but I don't. And that's social media and how quickly people can mobilize, and you can character-assassinate. You can build somebody up. When you get somebody like Selena Gomez with 350 million followers, and you get somebody like Taylor Swift with 300 million followers, and how quickly you can mobilize people or arrange things, it's a new phenomenon, quite frankly.
PETER HAYNES: So Frank, let's pick up on the UK for a moment because there were a few questions that came in advance about Keir Starmer and politics in the UK. And here's one from Sarah Houston who I know is in the audience. I'll just read you her question here that was sent in.
"So just over four years after the EU referendum, there seems to be a lot of data that supports that many British people now feel that Brexit was the wrong decision." And you and I have definitely spoken about that a few times.
"The Labor Party stated within its manifesto that it plans to reset its relationship and seeks to deepen its ties with its European neighbors. How do you envision the UK-EU relations will be restored and a more favorable trade agreement renegotiated? And additionally, although the Labor Party leader Keir Starmer has been very clear that Britain will not re-enter the single market or customs union framework of the EU, do you think that there is still some potential for the UK to revisit the idea of rejoining the EU, whether that's now or decades down the road?"
FRANK MCKENNA: So that's just plain a brilliant question. And I don't think there's any doubt that we have seller's remorse or buyer's regret, whichever you want to say. But I don't think there's any doubt that citizens of the UK now know they were sold a bill of goods. In fact, the last poll shows 65% of people in the UK think that Brexit was a mistake.
And what happened was David Cameron was the prime minister at the time. And he the Tory party is really quite divided on this issue in the UK, and he had some really rambunctious, rebellious members of his party who were pushing for more autonomy from Europe and wanting to get out. And Europe is a tough partner. They've got all kinds of rules and regs and everything else.
And in order to quiet it all, he just said, OK, we'll call a referendum on it. And the trouble, when you call a referendum, you can say it's a referendum on this. But you can't control what people vote on. People vote on your personality, whether they like your haircut, whether they like you, all kinds of things.
And you ended up getting a movement led by Nigel Lafarge, who's the British answer to Donald Trump, stirring things up. And they ended up stirring things up enough that by a very narrow margin, people voted to exit Europe. But once you have a referendum, it's like a jury verdict, very hard to overturn it. It's the will of the people. So the government was stuck with it.
And then you've got Boris Johnson trying to implement it. And Boris Johnson was the prime minister after-- because, essentially, Cameron resigned after that. He knew that he'd made a colossal mistake. Boris Johnson became the prime minister. And he's a real buffoon who treats everything lightly.
And he had been a big advocate of staying in Europe. And then after the referendum went the other way, he became a big advocate for leaving. And then they went through Liz Truss and all of-- Elizabeth May and everybody else. All of them messed it up. The negotiations were terrible. They had to renegotiate tens of thousands of bills, hundreds of thousands, millions of words had to be changed.
They had lorries waiting in line for days to move from Europe to the UK. It was just a total, absolute dumpster fire. And the people of the UK realized they were had. And so now there is real remorse. The problem is, both Labor, which was pro-Europe, and everybody else in the election, knew that it would be too traumatic to basically throw this into the election and say this is a referendum on whether we go back with Europe.
And Europe probably wouldn't want the UK back anyway. They've been whining and witching and whinging and bitching ever since they were in there. And Europe was just as glad to see them go. So there wasn't a good solution to just go back and say, look, we were just joking. Let's go back to the way it was.
So Labor have done the next best thing in my view, which is, say, we are going to re-engage with Europe. We're going to try to create a special relationship, more like the Scandinavian countries, which will have freer trade, fewer restrictions, et cetera, et cetera. So it'll be some kind of EU-lite arrangement. And from that, perhaps they'll go further.
But I think they're smart to say, look, let's just normalize things. Let's just smooth out the rough spots and try to make the relationship work. Most of Britain's economy is associated with trade with Europe. Why you would turn around and repudiate that defies just about every logical person.
So now they have to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And I think they'll do that without doing one dramatic event like reintegrating with Europe. They'll do it through a series of steps to normalize the relationship and make it work better than it does.
PETER HAYNES: Frank, Canadians, young Canadians may forget that, in 1995, we came very close to a separation in our country. Take us back to your recollection of the Quebec vote to separate from Canada and how close it was.
FRANK MCKENNA: Well, I'll tell you how close it was. It was so close that I had a speech prepared that night. And I still remember my line was, "Quebec, you've made your choice. I just want to know Canada loves you, and the porch light will always be on." I was distraught. I felt really emotional about it because I thought we had lost our country.
And I think how it was saved-- it was a very closely fought campaign. And I think how it was saved was this. I got a call from the prime minister's office-- I was premier-- saying-- this person who called saying we're in a lot of trouble. Our polling shows we're probably going to lose the referendum. We need a Hail Mary.
We're going to try to arrange a mass rally in Montreal, a kind of "we love Quebec" rally. You've got the best organization. We were lucky in New Brunswick. We had all the seats. We had 100,000 liberal cards in New Brunswick. We had the best organization in the country. And they said that, can you produce people? We need tens of thousands of people to go to this rally to make it work.
I said, yes, we can do that. We can produce. So that was a call Sunday evening. Monday morning, I had my staff meeting. And I said, the PMO wants us to lead this rally in Montreal. What do you think? And my staff said, that is the craziest effing idea we've ever heard in our life. We can't do it. It won't work. I said, I already told them we were going to do it. And they said, OK, let's make it happen.
That's what it's like being in the political foxhole. You can fight hard, and then you get out, and you roll up your sleeves. So this all had to happen within about a week. And we weren't the only ones who did it, but the whole country came together. We went out, and we got control of every bus in New Brunswick.
We went to the Irvings and got their whole fleet of buses. We took every school bus in New Brunswick. And we went to all of our organizations and said, do you want to be part of history? And I'll never forget that night.
I had a chance to fly over in a small airplane and look down. And the Trans Canada Highway had buses by the hundreds and then the thousands heading up to Quebec, one after the other after the other after the other, all to arrive in Montreal for this rally.
And the people who were on those buses tell me, to this day, it was the most important moment of their life because they felt they were part of saving Canada. And these people all went to Montreal, and it was a huge outburst of emotion, basically saying, Quebec, we love you. Don't leave. And I think it changed the tide. And we ended up winning that night by less than 100,000 votes, just barely. And I think that rally was enough.
PETER HAYNES: Well, I think all Canadians would speak and hope that we don't have to rally our country again against another province that has expressed interest in potentially not being supportive of the federal-provincial relationship here. And so let's hope we don't get to that day. So audience, any other questions for Frank here?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: You mentioned earlier about the French election. And I listened last month when you talked pretty in-depth about the French election. I'm curious to hear your take. Since then, a lot's changed. You mentioned like the two rounds of the snap election.
I'm wondering what the kind of unprecedented situation, with the three-way split national assembly, who you think's going to be in the driver's seat for prime minister potentially and where Macron's going to go with that kind of situation, whether a coalition is going to get formed or where that's going to move?
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. So it's a great question, and it requires a better understanding of the French system than I have. But I will say this-- Macron is not the president of France. He's the chancellor. Well, he is the president. But the president would be like our governor general, and below him would be the prime minister.
So he is in office for the next three years, regardless. This was not a vote on him. So just to be clear. And he will argue that he continues to represent France in terms of directing the armed forces and in terms of directing foreign policy.
But what the concern in Europe was, perhaps the most dramatic concern, that Le Pen forces on the right wing, who are very anti-Europe, would prevail, and that France would end up literally attacking Europe and not wanting to be part of the EU. And that would have been a horrible turn of events.
So that didn't happen because all of the forces on the left wing coalesced, something we hadn't seen before. Four different political parties all came together on the left wing, saying, we don't want these right-wingers to be running the country. So they all coalesced. And so they end up having the largest share of the election, and then the right wing second, and Macron's party third.
So his prime minister resigned. And Macron exhorted him to stay on until after the Olympics. So he'll stay on. And so what will happen now will be old-fashioned horse-trading, a lot of negotiation around who will become the prime minister. And it'll be some kind of a compromise probably between the left wing and Macron's party. And they'll fashion together some kind of a coalition in order to govern.
What will happen is that some things will be thrown out the window. France is facing a huge deficit, and they've never really met the European requirements for reducing their debt to 3% of GDP. So they probably are going to explode their deficit because they won't be able to agree on spending cuts.
Macron had decreed that the pension age would go from-- retirement age from 60 to 62, which would have saved, I don't know, $79 billion or something, a large amount of money. And that's out the window. All the political forces say, no, no, we're not going along with that. And there'll be a lot of other very difficult things to swallow from the results.
But it's like everything else in France. One of the ambassadors to France told me once that-- he said the interesting thing about France, everybody here loves revolution, as long as nothing changes. And so at the end of it, you saw this whiplash, right wing, left wing. And at the end of the day, they'll muddle through. They always do.
And I think France will continue to stay as a pivotal part of the EU. Without France and Germany, there really is no EU. And so I think they'll-- and the other thing, Europe, there's strong opposition now to the EU. A lot of right-wing forces have voted and everything. But I've watched this over a long period of time, and it waxes and wanes.
But the Europeans, unlike us, they don't forget that they've been through some of the most horrible wars in humanity's history in their lifetime. Tens of millions of people have died, soldiers and civilians, in the Great Wars that have afflicted Europe. There's not a part of Europe where you can't find battlefields.
They don't want to do that again. Whatever it takes to stay together, they will stay together. And whatever compromise they have to make, they will make those compromises.
PETER HAYNES: Well, Frank, you mentioned the Olympics. On the day we're taping here today, Canada has already won two gold medals. So we're definitely having a great day there. So I want to finish up here, as we always do, Frank, talking about the Blue Jays. And we are about, I don't know, 28 hours away from the trade deadline.
By the time this podcast comes out, the trade deadline will have passed. And I want to know, first of all, what you hope we do in the next 28 hours. The Blue Jays have already made a few moves so far. But the chatter out of New York is that the Vlad Guerrero to the Yankees rumors are really heating up. And I'm curious what your thoughts would be, hypothetically, if that trade were to occur before the trade deadline?
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah. So it's an open secret that I'm a huge baseball fanatic. But it's also an open secret that I'm pretty disillusioned with the Jays. Not only are they bad, but they're boring. And you could be bad and still have an exciting product. I think they're selling out the country. This is not just a Rogers team. This is a team for all of Canada.
40% of Canadians have Blue Jays paraphernalia. The whole country is invested in them. When you go to Seattle, there are more Blue Jays fans than there are Seattle fans, or Minnesota. So there should be enough respect-- and not only that, but it's one of the top two or three markets in all of baseball in terms of attendance and in terms of support.
I think you owe fans something. And this is a miserable team. And their farm system, as it turns out, is woefully weak as well. So there's not much redeeming value, you can say. So having said that, they are going to let players go who are now rental players. So there's no doubt that Kikuchi will be gone. Probably Chad Green will be gone. We've already lost Jansen and so on.
And that makes business sense. You're either a buyer or a seller. We're sellers because we don't seem to have much of a chance. So I can understand that. But I still can't wait to watch a game every day. And it's mostly because of Vladimir Guerrero. He's exciting.
I think you've got to keep somebody on the team who's exciting and has a chance to be a Blue Jay for the next 10 years and light it up. He's hitting home runs at a great pace now. His average is 300. He just plays the game with excitement. But also, we've got a young Cuban will be pitching today who I think has got an electric arm, and you could build around him.
I would keep Springer because we can't get rid of his contract and because he's exciting and lighting it up. I think Varsho, even though I think that was a bad deal that we made to get him, he plays hard. He's an electric outfielder to watch. He runs well. If he was on a team where they valued base-running, he would be a good guy to have. And he's starting to hit with some authority.
So some of those people-- I think Spencer Horwitz has the potential to be a 300 hitter in the Major Leagues. So there's something to build around on the team. I wouldn't tear it all down either. But right now, I feel pretty sad watching longtime Jays like Jansen go and some of the others. But Vladdy, that would break my heart, if he were to go.
Bichette seems to want to leave. I hope he doesn't. And I've always thought he was a Mookie Betts kind of five-tool guy that could be an All-Star for the next 15 years. This year's been a poor example of that. But overall, I've always had a lot of time for him. But I hope we don't tear down the people that really excite us. And so if they were to trade Vladdy to New York, that would break my heart.
PETER HAYNES: Yeah, especially because it's the Yankees, too.
FRANK MCKENNA: Yeah, of all teams.
PETER HAYNES: But I'm with you, Frank. The Blue Jays spent a lot of money on Rogers, spent a lot of money renovating the stadium. I'm sure many of the people in the room here today have visited the Blue Jays stadium this year.
FRANK MCKENNA: Nice stadium. It'd be nice if we had a team.
PETER HAYNES: It's absolutely beautiful. And so hopefully, we do still have a team. And I guess the issue that Guerrero and Bichette are going to ask management is, if you're tearing it down to the studs, why would I want to stay and sign long term? And if we don't trade them now, we don't get value for them.
So we'll have certainly more to say next month. And as you said before, we got taping here today. We've won three in a row. So you're back on the bandwagon here. So I'm sure that will be short-lived.
But Frank, again, on behalf of everybody who's in the audience here today, thank you very much for joining us. And I'm going to ask my colleague, David [? Cho ?] to come up here for some concluding remarks. But just before David comes up, thank you on behalf of TD for spending the time with us today. And we'll look forward to chatting again next month. Thank you.

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