For HSE Integrated Ltd., a Calgary company that sells industrial health and safety services, the recession has been a major downer.
Many of HSE's clients are in the oil and forestry industries, the automotive business, steel manufacturing and nickel mining, said chief executive officer David Yager. Each one of those sectors has been hammered by the downturn, making a big dent in HSE's business in recent months.
Yet, Mr. Yager is now optimistic that things have bottomed out.
"The first step to going up is to quit going down," and that appears to the case right now, he said. The oil industry is showing signs of life as a result of higher prices, U.S. Steel is bringing back some staff at its operation in Hamilton, Ont., and Chrysler's plant in Windsor, Ont., may be fired up once Fiat gets the keys, he said.
"It's just a little bit here and a little bit there, [but it's] a cumulative improvement."
Mr. Yager's relatively sunny view reflects the findings of the latest C-Suite survey of corporate executives, which shows a dramatic shift in the attitudes of those occupying corner offices, compared to just four months earlier.
While there was nothing but doom an gloom on their minds in the last survey, top managers now perceive significant brightness on the economic horizon.
Fully 55 per cent of the executives surveyed expect moderate growth in the Canadian economy in the next year, a sea change from the 11 per cent who felt that way in February.
And the proportion of those who expect growth in the struggling U.S. economy has surged from 5 per cent in February to 38 per cent this time round.
The C-Suite survey was conducted in late May and early June for Report on Business and Business News Network by Toronto market research firm Gandalf Group. Top executives from 157 firms responded.
The surveyed executives are also far more optimistic now about the prospects at their own companies. Fifty-eight per cent expect their firms to grow moderately in the next year, while 17 per cent foresee strong growth.
"Probably the worst is over," said Jean Perron, chief financial officer of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., a developer of hydro and wind power projects based in Longueuil, Que.
Mr. Perron also notes, however, that the economy is no where near where it was a year and a half ago, and as a result Innergex is still very cautious about making any ambitious corporate moves in the short run.
But a turnaround is certainly on the horizon, according to the executives polled, and it is coming more quickly than they thought at the time of the last survey.
In February fully 50 per cent of the respondents thought it would take at least a year for an economic recovery to take hold. Now only about one-quarter of executives expect to have to wait that long.
Almost half now think growth with resume in six months to a year, and a quarter expect a rebound in less than six months.
Glenn Squires, CEO of Holloway Lodging REIT, a real estate investment trust based in Bedford, Nova Scotia, said he is looking for a turnaround in the fourth quarter of this year for the hard-hit hotel business.
But Holloway's hotels, which are mainly in small and mid-sized cities across the country, may also get "a little bit of a pop" in the third quarter because of pent up demand for short-duration domestic travel, Mr. Squires said.
For hotels, the drop in business with the onset of the recession was extremely quick and deep, he said, so it is a relief to see some signs of improvement. "If I thought it was going to get worse, I don't know what I'd do. I'd go over to my fishing camp in Newfoundland and hibernate for a couple of years."
Many executives are shifting their views on staffing, as a consequence of an expected turnaround. In February almost 40 per cent of decision-makers said they would likely be cutting employment over the next year, but that number has now dropped to 13 per cent. Thirty-seven per cent said they plan to add staff in the next 12 months, up from 20 per cent in February.
