Canada’s business leaders want the Federal Government to use tax dollars for commissioning non-partisan survey research that focuses on program delivery and not partisan research that should be purchased by politicians using political donations. According to business leaders, examples of partisan research that should not be commissioned by or through the civil service include any study that measures:

• the performance of the ruling party on aspects of its policy platform, for example healthcare or military spending;
  
• perception of the Governing Party’s degree of fiscal responsibility, or;
  
• awareness of a politician’s track record on an issue, for example eliminating the deficit or running balanced budgets
  

A recently released survey commissioned by the Federal Government was viewed as having partisan purposes with almost half of respondents saying the ruling party should reimburse tax payers for the cost of the research.

These are the key findings from this week’s web-survey of CEOs and business leaders for publication in the Financial Post under the sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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