With the New Year just around the corner and a new Government in Ottawa, COMPAS asked business leaders ideal economic indicators and how well the Federal Government had performed on different elements of the economy in 2003.

When asked to indicate the amount that varying economic indicators would be in the ideal economic environment for business, respondents indicted figures that were sometimes close to today’s rates. For example, business leaders would like to see the loonie at $.78 ($76 today), inflation at 1.8%, and the rate of economic growth per quarter at 2.0 (1.1% for the third quarter).

In fact, business leaders gave the Federal Government fairly good scored for its performance on inflation and interest rates and moderate scores for its performance the loonie, economic growth and unemployment for 2003. the Federal Government received its worst scores, in fact failing grades, for its performance on corporate taxes, personal taxes and tax simplification.

Those are the principal conclusions to be drawn from this past week’s FP/COMPAS web poll of CEO’s and business leaders under the sponsorship of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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