Our latest release from the most recent Business Monitor – a quarterly tracking and B2B omnibus survey – shows widespread reservations about the war with Iran among Canadian business leaders.
The key highlights in this release include:
- A strong majority of business leaders oppose Canada's involvement in the war with Iran.
- Surprisingly few think the U.S. will prevail.
- Many business leaders are concerned about the war escalating to a global scale.
Overall, more than two-thirds of business leaders are against Canada joining the war against Iran.
There are few fence-sitters on this issue – just 1 in 10.
- Oppposition is strongest outside of Alberta and the Prairie provinces.
Only a minority of Canadian business leaders are confident that the U.S. will prevail in its war against Iran - fewer than 2 in 5.
An almost equal number are only moderately confident in a U.S. victory and almost a quarter think the U.S. will fail in Iran.
- Confidence in the U.S.'s prospects run highest in Alberta and the Prairies, albeit less than a majority. East of Ontario, only about a quarter think the U.S. will prevail.
A large majority of business leaders are at least moderately concerned about the Iran war escalating into a global conflict.
At this stage, approximately one third are highly concerned, while a quarter are unbothered about the volatility of the Iranian situation.
- Concerns run lowest east of Ontario.
Discussion
The U.S. and Israel war against Iran has been met with historically low support. It is rare, if not unprecedented, to find a majority of Americans opposing a war early in a campaign.
It is in this context that we find Canadian business leaders expressing strong reservations about the U.S.’s latest war. Prime Minister Carney’s qualified support is probably too elbows down to assuage concerns.
Methodology
The Business Monitor is powered by the Modus Business Panel – Canada’s only purpose-built, probability-based business 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 627 responses were gathered from Canadian managers and executives between April 2 and 15, 2026 . As the Modus Business Panel is 100% recruited using RDD probability-based sampling, it is valid to cite the margin of error and to project these results to the broader population of business leaders with statistical confidence. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.9% at a 95% confidence interval.
The data have been weighted by enterprise size and region using the latest Canadian enterprise population data from Statistics Canada.
