The most recent edition of the Business Monitor features business leaders’ views on Canada’s economic sovereignty. The Business Monitor is Canada’s only B2B omnibus.
The key highlights in this release include:
- Ratings for the federal government's performance in negotiations are mixed.
- The bar is low - there are dim expectations for a positive outcome.
- Business leaders have been following the negotiations very closely.
- Large numbers of businesses are being impacted by the tariffs already.
A more detailed presentation is in the report with additional findings.
Just over half of business leaders rate the federal government positively for its performance in U.S. trade negotiations.
This varies significantly across region per the chart on the right.
Business leaders are not optimistic about the outcome of these negotiations.
Just 1 in 10 think these negotiations will have a net positive outcome for Canada. With these dim expectations the bar is low for Canadian negotiators.
Ongoing Canada-U.S. trade negotiations is grabbing the close attention of business leaders.
A mere two per cent are not following the negotiations.
- Those most strongly impacted by tariffs are following news on negotiations more closely than almost anyone else – 78% very closely (compared with 58% of those not impacted).
A sizable majority say that Trump’s tariffs are impacting the financial health of their companies.
While just 1 in 5 say the tariffs are having a strong impact, fully two-thirds of companies are feeling an impact. The impact may not be a localized or narrow as some analysts have said.
- Across industries, financial services reports the lowest impact.
Discussion
This survey was conducted through the thick of the most recent trade negotiations between Canada and the United States. This issue captured the close attention of Canadian business leaders and was a major focus of Canadian news media.
While bankers have been downplaying the impact of tariffs, our data shows that almost 1 in 5 – representing over a quarter of a million businesses – are experiencing a strong impact on their business’s financial well-being. Another half million plus businesses are feeling an at least moderate impact. This does not comport with the idea that the impact is narrow and localized. The industry with lowest reported tariffs impact is financial services.
This edition of the Business Monitor only explored the impact of tariffs are a very high level. Past releases from the Monitor showed Canadian firms planning notable changes due to the re-election of Trump and his verbose threats of tariffs. The Monitor will examine the impact tariffs are having in the coming months in greater depth.
Finally, business leaders have very dim expectations for these negotiations to turn out well. The bar is low.
Methodology
The Business Monitor is powered by the Modus Business Panel – Canada’s only purpose-built, fully probability-based business research panel.
The survey was conducted online using both email and SMS invitations/reminders, and completed via desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. A total of 520 responses were gathered from Canadian managers and executives. As Modus Business Panel is 100% recruited using RDD probability-based telephone sampling, it is statistically valid to calculate the margin of error – it is plus or minus 4.3% at a 95% confidence interval.
The survey was conducted from August 12 to 26, 2026. We run surveys at the optimal timeframe for online surveys (~ two weeks) to avoid the early response bias of quick turnaround surveys. This survey was conducted through the thick of the most recent trade negotiations between Canada and the United States up to the day the talks broke off (August 21) and for several days following. Importantly, we tested pre- and post-negotiations respondents for any significant differences are there are none for the findings presented.
The data have been weighted by region and enterprise size using the latest population data from Statistics Canada.
