Compas Poll / Survey

Business leaders as a whole want the surplus allocated in roughly equal proportion among debt repayment, tax cuts, military-security, and health. Despite this shared, overall view, a passionate minority nonetheless opposes allocating any of the surplus to military-security or tax cuts.

Expressed another way, debt paydown and increased health spending elicit a moderate level of consensual enthusiasm. By contrast, military-security spending and tax cuts provoke a division between a staunch majority favouring more military-security spending and increased tax cuts on the one hand and a staunch minority opposing both, on the other.

To the extent that business people do not share a common outlook on how the surplus should be allocated, this poses a governance problem for the federal cabinet.

With respect to tax cuts, it appears as if there may be a growing appetite for across-the-board personal cuts at the expense of other kinds of tax reductions. However, it is possible that the appetite for personal cuts is seasonal, affected by the fact that the survey is conducted during the time of year devoted to submission of personal tax returns.

These are the key findings from the current web-survey of CEOs and other business leaders conducted by COMPAS on behalf of the National Post under sponsorship of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and CIBC.