The CFIB and the Disgruntled 2%

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has done a survey right here in the little old CBRM.

The CBRM Business Environment Survey was conducted between December 2021 and February 2022 and published in April 2022. I missed it but a reader was kind enough to send it along, knowing my great affection for the CFIB—a “knee-jerk right wing organization” with a habit of “grossly distort[ing] and manipulat[ing] the statistics” to support its arguments.

(Although I have to say, the CFIB rep who answered my questions about this survey seemed like a perfectly nice person for whom, I have to believe, answering questions for this very suspect organization is not a vocation but a job.)

The CFIB claims to be the country’s “champion of small business” while offering memberships to companies with 250+ employees or 20+ franchises. For David J. Climenhaga, whose articles in rabble.ca I quoted above, the CFIB is, like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an example of “pure, unadulterated AstroTurf pretending to serve the interests of one group while actually working against them.” (Climenhaga makes his point using the example of defined-benefit pension plans, which cost big businesses more than they want to spend—and which the CFIB has railed against in the past—but which actually benefit small business owners in that pensions tend to be spent locally.)

The CFIB claims 3,900 members in Nova Scotia and 400 in CBRM, so the response to this local survey—70 answers—may be statistically valid in terms of what local members of the CFIB think about doing business in the CBRM but it’s not really representative of the local business community: the CBRM has 3,759 commercial tax accounts, so 70 businesspeople represents just under 2% of them. I think the CFIB itself realizes its survey is not particularly representative, given the prominence (or lack thereof) it gives to the number of responses received, a figure I have helpfully drawn a messy, red circle around in the slide below:

The survey basically makes the same statement in a number of different ways, asking respondents whether they agree or disagree:

The CBRM treats my business fairly (e.g. reasonable taxes, easy to do business, reasonable regulations)? 

Thinking about red tape and customer service, how would you rate the CBRM on its performance in keeping the number of rules and their cost of compliance on your business (including your time) reasonable?

The fees associated with zoning, permitting and licenses are fair.

The CFIB reports that a majority of the 70 business owners who replied to this survey (66%) thinks the CBRM is doing a “NOT VERY GOOD JOB” or a “TERRIBLE JOB” of keeping the number of rules and the cost of compliance with these rules “reasonable,” although what respondents consider “reasonable”—like what they consider “fair”— is left to the reader’s imagination.

I particularly like the responses to a question about the timeliness of the municipality’s appeal process for zoning, building permits and inspections. The CFIB highlights the 40% of respondents who “somewhat disagree” or “strongly disagree” that the process is timely while ignoring the, to me, far more interesting fact that a full 35% of respondents “don’t know.”

Here’s what I’m thinking: if the CBRM is truly such a terrible place to do business, why could the CFIB not convince more than 70 members to fill out this survey? You’d think discontented businesspeople would be tripping over themselves to air and share views like the ones the CFIB chose to highlight (complete with grammatical errors and misspellings) in the survey:

Having established that the CBRM is doing a NOT VERY GOOD JOB in relation to its businesses (although a full 45% of respondents would invest in a new or expand an existing business in CBRM) 90% of respondents name “lower property tax levels” as something that would help their businesses succeed (6% said increased investment in public transit, meaning even members of the CFIB have moments of unexpected community-mindedness).

Funnily enough, a couple of months after this survey was published, the CBRM cut residential and commercial taxes by 5%, so I can only assume any follow-up survey by the CFIB will find these business owners happier—and more successful.