Canadian business confidence has split. Three years ago, CEOs expressed greater confidence in Canada's economy than in the companies they led. This year, the results of KPMG’s CEO Outlook 2026 survey put company confidence ahead by 15 percentage points. The gap with the global economy is nearly twice as wide.
The world around Canadian organizations offers fewer guarantees. Trade patterns are shifting, geopolitical tensions are reshaping investment decisions and economic conditions lead the list of threats to growth, with workforce pressures, supply-chain resilience, production demands and cybersecurity close behind.
Business leaders have checked the economic weather and found that it is raining. They are setting out anyway. Six in 10 expect annual earnings growth of at least 2.5 per cent. Ninety-one per cent plan to increase headcount. Eighty-nine per cent retain some appetite for acquisitions, and investment continues to flow into technology, people and resilience.
Growth remains in view
Enterprise confidence is translating into concrete growth plans:
60% expect annual earnings growth of at least 2.5%
91% expect headcount growth
89% report some appetite for acquisitions
Source: KPMG CEO Outlook 2026
Taken together, the results reveal where Canadian CEOs are now focused. They are looking inward for the means to move forward: to the choices they can make, the capabilities they can build and the advantages they can create. Rather than waiting for conditions to improve, they appear increasingly intent on shaping outcomes themselves.
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Room to move
Business confidence usually draws strength from the economy around it. Expanding markets widen the field of opportunity, predictable trade relationships make investment easier to price and stable supply chains keep strategy and execution aligned.
The “confidence inversion” we are seeing this year therefore points to something more consequential than a change in sentiment. It captures a transfer of conviction: Canadian CEOs are saying they can hold a cautious economic outlook and an ambitious company agenda at the same time. One measures the conditions they inherit, while the other reflects what they believe they can make of those conditions. (We’d add the same goes for a country.)
Similarly, the appetite for growth remains broad, but its intensity is changing.
Ninety-one per cent of Canadian CEOs expect to increase headcount, compared with 95 per cent in 2025. Beneath that finding sits a sharper adjustment: 17 per cent now expect headcount growth of six per cent or more, down from 39 per cent last year.
Acquisition plans show the same recalibration. Appetite for high-impact M&A has fallen from 55 per cent to 29 per cent, while appetite for moderate-impact transactions has risen from 33 per cent to 60 per cent.
This is ambition with a wider turning radius. CEOs are continuing to hire, invest and acquire while protecting their ability to change course. Capital still has to find a home, talent still has to be developed and markets still have to be pursued. The discipline lies in making each commitment expand the company’s choices rather than narrow them. Resilience keeps the doors open; foresight and execution determine which ones will create value.
Pressure in the plan
The forces weighing on growth are easy to name and harder to separate. Global economic conditions rank as the most frequently identified threat among Canadian respondents, cited by 31 per cent. Multi-generational workforce and culture follow at 27 per cent. Supply-chain resilience and pressure to maintain or increase production each stand at 25 per cent, geopolitical instability at 24 per cent, and cybersecurity and data security at 22 per cent.
These forces overlap. A geopolitical shock can reroute a supply chain, raise costs, test cyber defences and change the economics of an investment before the first response meeting begins. The challenge is to anticipate how one pressure may compound another, then respond before disruption spreads across the business.
But the longer view reveals an important distinction. Asked which trends will affect prosperity over the next three years, Canadian CEOs point most often to AI integration, rapid technological advancement, regulatory demands and AI workforce readiness. Geopolitical conflict remains significant, with 66 per cent agreeing that it will affect prosperity, while 51 per cent say the same of protectionism. Yet the higher-ranked challenges are also more closely connected to how an organization adapts, equips its people and executes.
That helps explain the confidence inversion. CEOs cannot determine the course of geopolitics or global trade, but many of the forces they expect to shape future prosperity still leave room for enterprise action. What kind of action? At this point, a portfolio of capabilities. Forty-three per cent are increasing investment in cybersecurity and digital-risk resilience. Thirty per cent are directing more toward AI integration, 29 per cent toward regulatory compliance and reporting, 26 per cent toward geopolitical monitoring and 24 per cent toward talent acquisition and retention.
Together, these investments give CEOs greater command over their organizations’ response. Cyber resilience protects operations, data and trust. Supply-chain visibility supports faster decisions. Regulatory readiness preserves routes to market. Workforce capability helps technology cross the distance between promise and performance. And geopolitical monitoring sharpens choices about markets, partners and capital.
The aim is a company that can absorb pressure and keep its balance.
AI clocks in
No investment better captures the transition from promise to performance than AI. Eighty-one per cent of Canadian CEOs identify AI as a top investment priority. They expect to allocate an average of 15.7 per cent of their budgets to AI over the coming year, compared with 13.6 per cent globally. Seventy-two per cent expect returns within one to three years.
AI investment carries high expectations for returns
81% of Canadian CEOs identify AI as a top investment priority
72% expect returns in one to three years
50% cite profitability or growth
43% cite new products, services or revenue streams
Source: KPMG CEO Outlook 2026
The issue has matured across recent surveys. AI's potential became an investment priority. Now that priority is becoming an operational one, raising questions about where AI fits, who owns it, how people work with it, and when it will create value.
CEOs expect the corresponding returns to be practical and measurable. They are banking on efficiency and productivity, profitability and growth, new products and revenue streams, and the removal of administrative work.
A pilot can show that AI works. Scaling it proves that it matters. Getting there demands data foundations, effective governance, cyber resilience, redesigned processes and clear ownership. AI earns its place when it improves the work, strengthens decisions or creates a better customer offering.
Work, rewritten
As AI clocks in, work changes around it. Eighty-two per cent of Canadian CEOs are redesigning roles, career paths and team structures around human-AI collaboration. Seventy-nine per cent are focusing on retaining and retraining talent. Seventy-seven per cent are hiring people with AI and technology capabilities.
The figures point to workforce reconfiguration, not a simple net-jobs-replacement story. Ninety-one per cent expect overall headcount to grow, even as 62 per cent plan reductions in some areas and large majorities redesign roles, retain or retrain talent, and hire people with AI and technology capabilities. The workforce may grow overall while changing considerably within.
This means leadership, too, has to change. Strategic foresight and scenario planning rank highest among the capabilities growing in importance, followed by emotional intelligence and resilience, and digital literacy and risk management.
This change in leadership focus is where governance becomes operational. Technical fluency can reveal what is possible, but sound judgment sets the course. Clear communication and trust keep the organization moving as the nature of work changes.
Out through the in door
A CEO survey can really only record what leaders expect, prioritize and say they plan to do. This year’s results also reveal something more consequential: where leaders believe progress begins.
Canadian CEOs see weaker growth around them. Inside their own organizations, they see choices. The route to broader prosperity may begin somewhere more immediate: within the enterprise itself. It can invest. It can hire. It can acquire. It can redesign work, strengthen resilience, deploy technology and enter new markets.
Those decisions need not stay inside the enterprise. Efforts that begin as company priorities can create wider economic benefits. Productive investment can raise capacity. Commercialization can create new sources of value. Workforce development can widen opportunity. Stronger companies can support stronger employment, exports and competitive positions.
Public policy, infrastructure, access to capital, regulation, workforce development and trade relationships will shape the wider conditions for growth. Business will shape what happens within those conditions. Every organization that turns an asset into productive capacity adds something to Canada’s economic foundation.
The past decade tested the ability of Canadian businesses to absorb disruption. The years ahead will test what they can create from that resilience.
The “confidence inversion” offers an early answer. CEOs are putting more focus on their capacity to act than on the promise of an easier environment. They have become more confident in what they can do than in what the economy can do for them. They are building room to choose, the means to execute and the strength to keep moving as conditions change.
The future will emerge, as it always does. Canadian CEOs are increasingly determined to have a direct hand in making it. It’s exactly what our country needs.
Putting potential in motion
CEOs are placing greater trust in their own organizations because this is where potential goes to work—literally. The enterprise is where intent becomes execution and where execution becomes capacity. In our view, the following five moves can turn greater individual agency into growth.
How we can help
As AI reshapes how we work and live, organizations must be bold, fast, and responsible all at once. KPMG can help your enterprise implement and scale responsible AI with a comprehensive suite of AI solutions to help your business stay ahead, contributing to a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
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About KPMG CEO Outlook
The 12th edition of the KPMG CEO Outlook, conducted with 1,400 CEOs between 11 August and 21 September 2026, provides an in-depth look into the minds of CEOs globally, from the ways in which they've had to evolve their business, to how they continue to deal with a multitude of complex economic and geopolitical challenges.
The annual survey includes the perspectives of CEOs from companies with annual revenues of over US$500 million and a third will have over US$10 billion. Respondents in the main survey are from 12 key markets and 13 key industries.
Note: Some figures may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.