{"id":59599,"date":"2025-05-12T17:55:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T17:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/05\/12\/canadian-businesses-in-a-bit-of-a-holding-pattern-amid-trade-war-recession-fears-leger-poll\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T17:55:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T17:55:30","slug":"canadian-businesses-in-a-bit-of-a-holding-pattern-amid-trade-war-recession-fears-leger-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/05\/12\/canadian-businesses-in-a-bit-of-a-holding-pattern-amid-trade-war-recession-fears-leger-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian businesses in \u2018a bit of a holding pattern\u2019 amid trade war, recession fears: L\u00e9ger poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<br \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carney needs to make business case for Canadian energy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pfAdNFT9uVw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> Canadian business leaders are in the throes of major economic uncertainty and want the federal government to prioritize its approach to foreign and domestic trade, <\/p>\n<p>                according to the latest <\/p>\n<p>                L\u00e9ger survey\u00a0conducted exclusively for Financial Post. <\/p>\n<p> The senior business leaders surveyed identified trade diversification outside of the U.S. as the top priority for the government (36 per cent of respondents), followed by reducing <\/p>\n<p>                interprovincial trade<\/p>\n<p>                 barriers (33 per cent) and agenda items like <\/p>\n<p>                tax reforms<\/p>\n<p>                 and relief (29 per cent). <\/p>\n<p> Andrew Enns, executive vice-president of L\u00e9ger\u2019s Central Canada operations, said Canadian businesses could be hoping these measures boost productivity and \u201ctake the edge off\u201d a potential recession. The data also reflected how Canadian businesses have changed their views of the U.S. as a reliable trading partner, Enns said. <\/p>\n<p> The poll findings revealed 86 per cent of senior business leaders were concerned about inflation and 87 per cent about a potential recession \u2014 high numbers, but not significantly different from L\u00e9ger\u2019s <\/p>\n<p>                last poll, which was conducted in March.  <\/p>\n<p> Canadian businesses are in \u201ca bit of a holding pattern,\u201d said Enns. \u201cThere\u2019s just really no consensus around where things are going to go.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> They\u2019re still taking, or considering taking, steps to manage their costs, such as cutting back on spending (68 per cent), buying or investing more in Canada (64 per cent) and looking for alternatives to American suppliers and clients (63 per cent). <\/p>\n<p> There was an increase in those considering or actually postponing new hirings (58 per cent, compared to 54 per cent in March) and laying off existing staff (36 per cent compared to 28 per cent). The May poll also said 42 per cent of business leaders were looking at reducing or had reduced or re-evaluated employee benefits and compensation packages. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cThe uncertainty for businesses is really challenging from an operational standpoint,\u201d said Enns, adding that these measures don\u2019t bode well for Canadians looking for work right now. The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.9 per cent in April, returning to November\u2019s high, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada. <\/p>\n<p> The L\u00e9ger poll said 38 per cent of senior business leaders had no idea what will happen with <\/p>\n<p>                U.S. tariffs<\/p>\n<p>                 imposed on Canada. Another 23 per cent said they expected the U.S. to remove all, or nearly all, tariffs on Canada in the coming weeks, while 19 per cent said they believed tariffs could remain in place for a year or more. Seventeen per cent felt even more tariffs could be coming. <\/p>\n<p> However, Enns thinks most business leaders are \u201ccautiously optimistic\u201d about the new government. <\/p>\n<p> More than half of business leaders (55 per cent) said they trusted <\/p>\n<p>                Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/p>\n<p>                 to manage the Canada\u2013U.S. relationship and defend the country against the political and financial decisions of <\/p>\n<p>                U.S. President Donald Trump.  <\/p>\n<p> \u201cMr. Carney\u2019s resume with managing the economic crisis in 2008\u20132009, as well as his pedigree in terms of the <\/p>\n<p>                Bank of Canada<\/p>\n<p>                 and Bank of England, probably provided a greater measure of comfort,\u201d Enns said. \u201cAnd I would also say that, for business leaders, where certainty and stability is really critical for operations, Mr. Carney might have presented a more stable transition from the Trudeau government.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> About 63 per cent of senior business leaders reported satisfaction with the election outcome. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"related_links\">\n<li>What&#8217;s in the U.S.-U.K. trade deal?<\/li>\n<li>Canada&#8217;s trade deficit narrows to $506 million<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> That said, Enns noted only\u00a055 per cent of business leaders in Western Canada were satisfied with the election results (compared to over 70 per cent of respondents in Eastern Canada), pointing to strong dissatisfaction from Albertans who want more progress made on Canada\u2019s energy sector. <\/p>\n<p> The survey was conducted between Apr. 29 and May 5 among 201 members of the LEO Decision panel, a proprietary group of Canadian business leaders, established by L\u00e9ger in collaboration with HEC Montreal. <\/p>\n<p> <em>\u2022 Email: slouis@postmedia.com<\/em> <\/p>\n<p> <em><strong>Bookmark our website and support our journalism:<\/strong> Don\u2019t miss the business news you need to know \u2014 add financialpost.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n<br \/>Canadian businesses in \u2018a bit of a holding pattern\u2019 amid trade war, recession fears: L\u00e9ger poll<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2025-05-12 17:55:30<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian business leaders are in the throes of major economic uncertainty and want the federal government to prioritize its approach to foreign and domestic trade, according to the latest L\u00e9ger&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/59600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}