Some of your business owner clients’ concerns include costs, labour and tariffs. These concerns, and others, were studied by Statistics Canada in April and early May 2025 during the agency’s Canadian Survey on Business Conditions, which collects information on the environment that businesses are currently operating in.

Just 16.2 per cent of businesses said they expect their sales of goods and services to increase over the next three months, but finance and insurance sectors were included in this population with 24.1 per cent saying sales will increase in the coming quarter.

Cost-related obstacles 

The researchers found that cost-related obstacles to business growth in the next three months were a problem for 65.4 per cent of businesses overall. Average hourly wages are also a pressure – these rose 3.4 per cent on a year-over-year basis in April 2025, following growth of 3.6 per cent in March.

Furthermore, 49.3 per cent said they expect inflation to be an obstacle to contend with in the next three months – it was the most expected obstacle mentioned in the survey. Cost of inputs, meanwhile, (these include labour, raw materials and energy) was the second most expected obstacle, anticipated by 27.7 per cent of businesses.

“When asked to indicate which expected obstacle would be the most challenging over the next three months, 13.8 per cent of businesses reported inflation, 9.1 per cent indicated cost of inputs and 8.6 per cent reported recruiting skilled employees,” they write.

“35 per cent of businesses expect to face labour-related obstacles over the next three months.” Close to 40 per cent of businesses said they expect labour-related obstacles to limit business growth.

Impact of tariffs on business 

Regarding tariffs, a small number – just 18.1 per cent of all businesses, whether they are engaged in trade or not, anticipate that tariffs will have a high impact on their business; 27.9 per cent expect the imposition of tariffs to have no impact on business.

Against this backdrop, 70 per cent of business leaders said they were either very optimistic or somewhat optimistic about their outlook over the next 12 months. “This represents the first time the proportion of businesses with an optimistic future outlook has fallen to 70 per cent or below since the first quarter of 2024,” they write.