As a member of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Langley Chamber is pleased to share the Q4 Canadian Survey on Business Conditions.

This comprehensive report provides a quarterly pulse check on Canada’s business landscape and explores everything from inflationary pressures and labour challenges, to growth outlook and trends in tech adoption.  Powered by the Chamber of Commerce network, the survey is based on responses from 17,363 businesses across Canada, and was conducted by Statistics Canada in October and November 2022.

Key findings of the survey:

• Business Obstacles
  • Top near-term obstacles for Canadian companies in 2023 are rising costs of doing business. Persistent inflation is the biggest pain point, cited by well over half of all businesses (58%), followed by rising input costs (48%) and debt costs (39%).
• Inflationary Pressures
  • With persistent inflation, about one-third of businesses plan to increase their selling prices in the next quarter to combat cost pressures -- expected to be more prevalent in Northern, Central and Western Canada.
• Debt Constraints
  • Businesses’ ability to take on debt has improved, although remains constrained, especially for smaller firms and underrepresented groups. Although 57% of businesses are able to take on more debt, 75% do not plan on taking out a loan mainly due to rising interest rates and uncertainty in the economy.
• Labour Challenges
  • Recruiting and retaining employees remain major issues for businesses, despite improvements over the past year.
• Supply Chain Issues
  • Supply chain issues are improving, as difficulty acquiring inputs and maintaining inventory levels have steadily decreased as obstacles over the past year as more business report implementing management strategies.
• Tech/Digital Adoption
  • Planned adoption of emerging technologies, including automation (6%), Artificial Intelligence (6%) and robotics (1%), remains low across all businesses. The need to hire workers with technological skills (40%), have access to financial resources (35%) and ability to retain employees (26%) are cited as key obstacles to adoption.
• Business Optimism
  • Business optimism across industries has tempered over the course of this year. Firms in arts, entertainment and recreation, healthcare and wholesale trade are the most optimistic.