After a year of trade fractures and economic volatility, Canadian CEOs have accepted that “uncertainty is the new normal” — and are responding by tightening control over costs, capital and operations rather than chasing growth abroad, according to a new EY Canada survey.
“For Canada, it’s absolutely a repositioning and a refocus,” Mauricio Zelaya, EY Canada’s national economics leader, told Yahoo Finance Canada. “It means rightsizing the organization and divesting certain assets to focus on the core. Geopolitical and macroeconomic risk is no longer top of mind — they’ve accepted it.”
A global version of the survey shows international CEOs more inclined to seek growth through acquisitions, more prepared to push investments forward despite disruptions, and more committed to “accelerate top-line growth.” The Canadian survey, which canvassed 50 CEOs from public and private companies with 2025 revenue between $325 million and $14 billion, shows leaders aggressively transforming the one thing they can control — their own cost structures.
Zelaya notes the resilience captured in the data. Though confidence around prices, growth, talent and investments has softened slightly since September 2025, the vast majority of CEOs remain somewhat or very optimistic about their 2026 prospects.
The focus on efficiency is being driven by necessity as much as strategy. Although CEO confidence remains resilient in areas like talent and technology, their belief in their ability to pass rising costs on to consumers has weakened. With the option to price their way out of trouble less plausible, optimizing operations to squeeze out new productivity has become a better lever for survival.
Zelaya suggests this inward turn is also a belated reckoning with Canada’s long-standing productivity gap. The previous year “just amplified and exposed existing systemic issues we’ve had in Canada for a long time,” he says, pointing to historical underinvestment in innovation. Now, rather than waiting for external conditions to improve, Canadian companies are using this period of instability to finally address those structural weaknesses. “For them, it’s more uncertainty is the new normal. … and because of that, they say ‘We’re no longer going to rely on external forces to drive our business,’” Zelaya said, instead asking “What is it that we can do?”
The survey shows 98 per cent of Canadian CEOs have altered their strategic plans in response to geopolitical uncertainty, moves Zelaya says stand in contrast to the “wait-and-see” posture of 2025. “Everyone is doing something,” he said. “Some just stopped completely. Others delayed. They exited markets. They entered markets. They relocated. They adapted to try and transform right now.”