economy
ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF STRIFE There’s a saying that it’s always darkest before the dawn (it’s a favourite refrain of mine, especially when sung by Florence Welch). I suppose in some ways this could be classified as a truism, but even so, it can provide some grounding and guidance during difficult times. Covid has been one such difficult time, especially during the early days when significant uncertainty prevailed. Questions we were asking at the time included: how long will we be working from home? Will we ever be able to travel again? How depressed will our economy ultimately become, and can we ever bounce back? Things certainly seemed dire in those early months, and while we are clearly not out of the woods yet—with many challenges still ahead of us—today we have a better sense for how far we have come and, in some ways, how far we have to go to get back to some semblance of a pre-Covid world. In this context, it’s not entirely surprising (and I think it’s fair to say) that optimism
abounds more so now than at any time since February 2020. Certainly this is the case for Canadian businesses, who were recently polled by Statistics Canada on their views of the next 12 months. Overall, and as of Q3 2021, more than three- quarters of businesses surveyed (75.7%) indicated a sense of optimism about business conditions over the next year. This group of optimists included 52.0% who said they were somewhat optimistic, while 23.7% indicated they were very optimistic. This is interesting and all, sure, but why do we really care about how businesses “feel” about the future? Quite simply, because the more optimistic they are about our society and economic conditions, the more likely they are to invest in their businesses and expand their workforces. For now, then, the rest of us can feel optimistically about this leading economic indicator.
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