In our brief, we drew a parallel with U.S. tax reform. The United States has decided to adopt much lower tax burdens in the hope of stimulating investment. However, many economists and thinkers in Canada believe that we should do the opposite. In any event, a comparison of the governments, provinces and federal taxes of the two countries shows that tax reform in the United States has put American companies on equal footing with Canadian companies in terms of their taxation.
So we should instead focus on the factors in our brief. With a highly developed public health system in Canada compared to the United States, the costs to Canadian companies are significantly lower. Here, health-related costs represent 4% of business spending, while in the United States, it is more like 20%. From a strictly accounting point of view, we have a competitive advantage in this area.
Another advantage that is more difficult to measure but equally important, is that health care provided to Canadians, including workers, is fully covered, which isn't the case in the United States. As we have seen, the Americans were forced to establish Obamacare. With the American tax reform, we now fear that the Republicans will come back and try to weaken this system, which would cause a large part of the American population to lose their recent health gains.
Canada is also competitive in other respects, such as through more proactive investments and the use of renewable energy. We saw in the current government's last budget that it had adopted a more proactive approach than the previous Conservative government, in particular by setting up certain industrial clusters in sectors of the fourth industrial revolution.
We can do a lot. We could invest in education and training of the labour force. As we said in our brief, we must continue to be a welcoming place for immigrants, which currently distinguishes us somewhat from the Americans. This is a very positive elements and an important solution to the scarcity of labour and the lack of workers in Canada and Quebec. These are factors that must be emphasized.
According to the Trump government, U.S. tax reform was expected to attract major investments. In the short term, however, this isn't the case. It hasn't let to increases in workers' wages in the United States, either. For the time being, this reform has only resulted in the repurchase of shares by some American companies and additional dividend payments, which benefits the managers and investors of these companies, but represents no gain for the middle class or for workers.
The measures we are recommending are pretty much in step with those proposed by the government's Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which is chaired by Dominic Barton, if I'm not mistaken.