Canada’s Business Leaders are unimpressed with the 2023 Federal Budget

In the latest release from The Business Monitor, Canadian businesses provided their feedback on the 2023 federal budget.

With a strong plurality rating the 2023 federal budget negatively, it safe to say Canada’s business leaders are not impressed.

Key findings in this release:

  • Rating the 2023 federal budget
  • Main reason for negative rating: spending

A plurality of Canadian businesses rate the budget negatively.

These negative ratings reach majority territory in Alberta (57%) and among a number of industry sectors, including:

  • Primary: 68%
  • Real estate: 58%
  • Finance: 56%
  • Manufacturing: 56%

Quebec has the lowest level of negative ratings at just 29% but is on average with just 1 in 6 rating the budget favourably.

The main issue for Canada's business leaders is the level of spending.

Approximately two-thirds say the federal government should have cut spending.
 
Few think they hit the right balance.
 
These results are consistent across size and type of business, as well as region.

Discussion

At a high level, it is clear Canadian businesses are unhappy about the 2023 federal budget. Our next release will dig into the key measures introduced and business leaders’ assessment.

Methodology

This edition of The Business Monitor was conducted from March 31 to April 2 using the Modus Business Panel – Canada’s only purpose-built, 100% probability-based B2B research panel. Because the Panel is built using random probability telephone sampling, it is valid to cite the margin of error for this survey. The survey is based on a representative sample of 604 Canadian managers and executives and has a margin of error of +/- 4.0% at a 95% confidence interval. The survey data are weighted by size and region according to the latest Statistics Canada data to help ensure representativeness for Canadian enterprises.

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