Boost of business confidence

Manitoba business owners and managers are feeling more optimistic about the future, less concerned about tariffs and are happier with the federal government — but concerns still weigh heavy, according to a new Probe Research survey.

This time last year, only 22 per cent of Manitoba businesses surveyed told Probe they believed they’d be better off in the coming year, while 31 per cent believed they’d be worse straits.

In the latest poll, 30 per cent said they believe they’ll be better off in 2027, and the number that feel it will be worse has nearly halved to 16 per cent. Forty-three per cent don’t expect any change, up from 37 per cent last year.

After a tumultuous year of tariffs talk on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border — and Probe’s polling showing Manitoba business owners are less worried about tariffs now than they were in 2025 — it seems many respondents feel they’ve “largely weathered the worst of the storm,” said Probe partner Curtis Brown.

“Last year, it looked pretty dire — suddenly, you had this massive spike of businesses that said we’re going to be worse off, that’s dropped back down to where it was a couple of years ago,” he said Tuesday.

“The level of confidence seems to be increasing. Now, are businesses thinking that they’re really out of the woods and that much better? No.”

Despite the proportion of businesses struggling to find skilled workers dropping significantly — to 42 per cent, down from 58 per cent — the number of businesses that are expecting to hire more staff declined for the fifth year in a row (to 14 per cent). That number has dropped yearly after hitting a 12-year high of 35 per cent in 2022. However, fewer businesses said they planned to lay off staff, dropping to six per cent in 2026 from 12 per cent last year.

“I think businesses are probably, more than anything, trying to recover, retrench, that sort of thing, and they’re not suddenly looking to hire a whole pile of people or expand in a major way,” Brown said.

The poll surveyed 202 business owners and managers between Feb. 6 and March 2.

Operating costs continue to be the prevailing issue businesses face, according to respondents, while fewer listed U.S. tariffs as a top concern (21 per cent, down from 35 per cent last year).

Ten per cent listed adoption of artificial intelligence as a top concern, but only 32 per cent said they are using AI to some degree (unchanged from last year). A growing number of businesses said they don’t expect AI to impact the size of their workforce.

“I think the initial expectations around (AI) were that this was going to lead to sudden big layoffs … we’re not really seeing that expectation,” Brown said.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses has seen “back-to-back months of renewed optimism” among its members in Manitoba, and the province has the highest rates of long-term optimism in the country based on its own research, said senior policy analyst Tyler Slobogian.

“I think we’re kind of waiting to see, as these spring months come and go, how that optimism is affected by the provincial budget,” he said.

Confidence in the Manitoba NDP government dipped slightly in Probe’s polling, from 63 per cent voting they were either “somewhat” or “very” confident in the party led by Premier Wab Kinew in 2025, to 56 per cent in 2026.

However, a large factor in the overall growing confidence of business owners appears to be linked to the federal government’s response to tariffs and in the job Prime Minister Mark Carney is doing.

Confidence in the Liberal party led by Carney was 20 per cent higher than when business owners were polled while the party under Justin Trudeau’s leadership. Meanwhile, confidence in a potential Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre dropped to 34 per cent from 46 per cent.

Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Loren Remillard pointed to “buy Canadian” legislation rolled out in December and Carney’s efforts to bolster Canada’s steel and aluminum sectors as examples of Ottawa hearing the concerns of business owners.

“Tariffs have been devastating to those sectors, but you have a federal government saying we’re going to invest in defence and we’re going to utilize Canadian steel and aluminum. As the prime minister said, the government’s going to be our best customer,” he said. “When the business community hears that, it gives you confidence.”

Manitobans — both the public and the business sector — are more likely to be interested in trading more with China, and are more likely to prefer having no trade deal at all with the United States over signing a bad deal.

Two-thirds of the public and 71 per cent of business leaders said any deal Canada negotiates won’t be “worth anything” under U.S. President Donald Trump, and 64 per cent of the public and 56 per cent of businesses said the U.S. is no longer an ally to Canada.

Remillard suggested the 62 per cent of businesses that said they were confident any potential trade losses with the U.S. could be replaced by deals with other countries could think that way because the vast majority of Manitoba goods travel tariff-free as part of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

“I’m not advocating for Canada to secure any deal at any cost, quite the contrary … but let’s just be mindful that our quality of life, our economy, has been built through collaboration with key trading partners,” he said.

“While there’s a lot of angst and anxiety and animosity currently as it relates to our relationship with our largest trading partner, this, too, shall pass.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca