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Mr. Kelly was responding in part to the debate that broke out this summer over whether Canadian companies were hoarding cash.

The issue was triggered by comments by Mr. Carney, the Bank of Canada Governor, in August pointing out that businesses in Canada were sitting on a massive cash pile of $526-billion, based on first quarter data from National Balance Sheet Accounts, a publication put out by Statistics Canada.

Mr. Carney’s remarks were aimed at larger, publicly traded companies— he later made that clear referring specifically to public companies, urging them to do something with the cash, or give it to their shareholders.

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But the recent data indicates that small businesses also are nervous about spending, even if it doesn’t necessarily suggest they’re hoarding cash.

“You could certainly say that small businesses may be particularly cautious at this time, given the economic uncertainty,” said Sonya Gulati, senior economist at TD Economics. “They do play a part [in cash hoarding], but I wouldn’t necessarily know what their share would be because the data is not there at all.”

Few small businesses make public their earnings or how much cash they have on hand. As a result, economists say the best way to gauge whether small businesses are hanging on to cash is by way of confidence surveys.

Most surveys this year show that small businesses have lacked the confidence to spend. Ms. Gulati said that despite a slight boost in their outlook, the fact that both Canadian and global economic growth is predicted to be tame next year gives entrepreneurs little reason to be optimistic.