Canadian business leaders are becoming increasingly optimistic about our economy. Looking ahead to the first six months of 2002, 40% of respondents in this Financial Post/COMPAS CEO poll sponsored by CIBC and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce predict modest growth, as shown in table 1. Looking ahead to the last six months of 2002, 65% of respondents predict modest growth and 16% forecast strong growth, as shown in table 2. Only 2% of respondents forecast a contraction of the economy during the last two quarters of 2002.

COMPAS asked a somewhat similar forecasting question in previous waves of the Financial Post/COMPAS/CIBC/Canadian Chamber of Commerce web-survey. In Weeks 1 and 5, respondents were asked “Looking forward six months, do you predict that economic conditions in Canada will be…much better than right now, somewhat better, about the same, somewhat worse, or much worse?” In Week 1, respondents were divided equally between optimists and pessimists. In Week 5, those who predicted better conditions in six months accounted for half of respondents (53%) and outnumbered more than 2:1 those who foresaw worse economic conditions, as shown in table 3. Thus, in Week 5 COMPAS reported, ” CEOs and business leaders have become more optimistic,” a trend that appears to be continuing.

The respondents in this study are CEOs and senior executives in the large, medium, and small companies that belong to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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