Canadians’ business confidence held steady in March from the previous month, but is trailing confidence levels from a year ago, according to a just-released consumer confidence survey conducted by TNS.
The new survey gauged Canadian confidence at 95.2 this month, virtually unchanged from 95.1 last month.
Norman Baillie-David, vice-president and director of public opinion research for TNS, told Business in Vancouver that Canadians’ confidence levels, as tracked by the index, reflect what survey respondents are gleaning from media reports when the survey is taken. In the most recent survey period, he said, not much economic news was being reported at all.
“The markets were flat, essentially we didn’t hear a lot of economic news; people were tuning into robocalls and other sensational stories,” he said.
He added that Canadians are feeling disconnected from economic news.
“Because the markets and all the [economic] indicators have been gyrating so much, there’s sort of a disconnection going on, [a mentality of] ‘unless there’s something really important going on, I’m not thinking about this.’”
He said that disconnection doesn’t raise confidence but it doesn’t lower it either.
While business confidence may be steady from last month, it’s down 3.2 percentage points from a year ago – despite the fact that year-ago respondents were reacting to unrest in the Middle East, high oil prices and, at the tail-end of the surveying period, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.
