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Harper’s Conservatives have trumped Martin’s Liberals in the first round of campaign promises in the eyes of CEOs and business leaders on the business panel, notably over daycare.
The single most popular proposal is the promise to allow trades people a tax deduction for the cost of tools and equipment. Its extraordinary 81 point score on a 100 point school-type report card reflects high enthusiasm for the Conservative proposal among both enthusiasts for Conservative campaign promises and enthusiasts for Liberal ones. Thus, the tool deduction proposal earns Harper goodwill across the spectrum of business leaders.
Harper’s daycare proposal elicits less goodwill than the tool deduction across the spectrum but daycare probably delivers far more electoral benefit in this audience. The Conservatives’ daycare proposal elicits the second highest rating, 68 points—nominally ahead of Martin’s promise to spend more on the military, which elicits 66 points. Among this audience, the CPC daycare proposal is nonetheless closest to a magic electoral bullet in the campaign so far because
- The panel repudiates Martin’s daycare platform, which earns a failing grade of 42 points with most panellists (57%) saying that Martin’s proposal reflects unclear thinking, and
- Support for Harper’s daycare proposal is passionate, as discussed in the body of the report.
These are the key findings from this past week’s web-survey of the panel of CEOs and business leaders undertaken for the National Post by COMPAS under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP.
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