Business leaders overwhelmingly believe that a New Democratic Party governmentwould be bad for business, yet 56% believe that Premier Christy Clarkis doing a "poor" job, according to a recent Ipsos Reid-Business in Vancouver quarterly business outlook survey.
Only 35% of the 170 business leaders surveyed between April 2 and 10 believe that Clark is doing a good job.
"This is a group who really supports the BC Liberals and wants the Liberals to do well," said Ipsos Reid vice-president Kyle Braid. "They're expressing that they're not happy and would like to see something different. They're worried." Indeed, 60% of those surveyed said that an NDP government would have a negative impact on their business.
Braid said Ipsos has done countless political surveys of business leaders through the years, and standard business concerns tend to be that the NDP will:
•raise taxes;
•institute burdensome regulations; and
•revise the Labour Relations Code to favour workers over employers.
"Those are always the issues that come up when we ask business leaders about changing the government and specifically changing the government to the NDP," Braid said.
So while Clark has told media that her party has sent a vice-president to tour the province to gauge the popularity of changing the party's name before the May 2013 vote, the good news for the BC Liberal Party is that it still has the overwhelming support of business.
The survey showed that the Liberals have 48% business support compared with 21% for the NDP and 21% for the BC Conservatives. The Green Party of BC has 6% support whereas 4% of those surveyed said they would vote for other parties. Braid said the business leaders' "poor" assessment of Clark likely results from a February Ipsos poll showing that 44% of British Columbians support the NDP, 12% more than the Liberals. •
