We've already talked about the TOSI and passive investment rules. We think there are some improvements to make them simpler and easier to administer by the small business owners and to be fairer to them.
In the 2018 budget there are proposals to wind up what are called “health and welfare trusts” by 2020 and have them integrated into a new regime called “employee life and health trusts”. We estimate there are about 4,000 of those health and welfare trusts in existence that are primarily being employed by small business owners. We're concerned that the employee life and health trust rules do not accommodate the needs of small business owners, so we are asking the government, as part of that process, to take a closer look at how these rules apply to small business owners and to make sure the owner-manager or their employees do not lose protection through this process.
We talked about the intergenerational transfer rules. We believe there's a good middle ground, where the government is concerned, on the loss of tax revenues, but there is an opportunity to create an exception that will accommodate true transfers of businesses so that small business owners aren't in this funny situation where they have to sell their business to an arm's-length person to get a better tax result.
There's a lot of discussion about Canada-U.S. competitiveness. I don't think we've seen any significant analysis that would suggest that the U.S. has a significant advantage. However, if you look at all of the pieces of what the U.S. offers to business owners versus what Canada may offer, the dynamics have changed. We need to recognize that the dynamics have changed and react to those changes.