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HomeNewsBC's June small business optimism remains steady despite political uncertainty

BC’s June small business optimism remains steady despite political uncertainty

For the second consecutive month, BC’s entrepreneurs are the most confident in Canada.

The province’s small business optimism rose 0.1 points in June to 69.5.

This follows a spike of 2.3 points in May.

Here are the top four provinces.

BC (69.5)
PEI (67.5)
Manitoba (67.1)
Quebec (65.8)

On the flip side, provinces like Saskatchewan (51.8) and Newfoundland(48.2) are at the bottom.

This is happening despite all the political uncertainty in BC ahead of today’s confidence vote according to Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) economist Aaron Aerts.

“There has not been any new policy changes so there’s nothing really to change right now in terms of what they’re looking at so until something you know really major happens they are just going to run their business as they have.”

The results come just a week after the CFIB completed their Post-Election Survey.

About 81% of small business owners are not confident the parties will work together on policies that support small business while 79% are worried their costs will increase as a result of the BC election.

Despite the results of the survey, there are many reasons why small business owners feel confident according to Aerts.

“We’re seeing some really strong growth numbers in terms of economic growth and job numbers and if you look at the fiscal update yesterday clearly things are going pretty well in BC and I think that is reflective to how small businesses are feeling.”

Small businesses are also doing a good job of ignoring all the political noise from Victoria.

“It will be interesting to see in July with what happens in the political sphere and what happens with business confidence but you a lot of businesses are focused on running their business so I think there’s a lot of them that are ignoring the kind of the semantics that are going on right now,” says Aerts.

BC’s lead over the national index (60.9) widened this month to the tune of 6.6 points.

An index level between 65 and 75 means the economy is growing at its potential.

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