The Conference Board says its September survey indicates Canadian consumers were generally the most confident in more than a year.
Consumer confidence is soaring in British Columbia, with the province recording the biggest improvement in Canada this month, according to a Conference Board of Canada report released Wednesday.
Nationally, the Ottawa-based economic forecaster said its index of consumer confidence increased 6.7 points to 82.2.
But the biggest spike was in B.C., where the index jumped 24.7 points to 110.8, indicating B.C. consumers are the most confident in more than a year.
The province's increase was driven by improvements on all four questions asked of respondents in more than 2,000 telephone interviews, the report said.
Optimism was particularly strong on the topic of current finances, said report author Todd Crawford.
"It was the first time that the balance of opinion on this question has been positive in B.C. since April 2008," he said. "Given that it was negative for such a long time, this month's return to positive territory could turn out to be an anomaly."
One of the questions was whether respondents' financial situation has improved, stayed the same, or worsened during the past six months.
Nationally, 18.4 per cent said their situation had improved, an increase of two percentage points from last month's survey.
This marks only the second time in the past two years that positive responses have outnumbered negative ones on this question, the report said.
On the question of future finances, 25.2 per cent of respondents said they expected an improvement over the next six months, an increase of 1.2 percentage points.
Only 15.6 per cent said they expected their financial situation to worsen, down 1.7 percentage points since August.
There were also slight improvements on questions that typically elicit a negative response, such as future employment prospects and whether now is a good time for a major purchase such as a car or a house.
This month's survey was conducted in early September, and the margin of error is plus or minus 2.1 per cent.