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The myth is that Canadians dramatically higher taxes, but that’s not exactly true if you consider benefits received.

Consider health care.

Americans spend 18 per cent of their GDP on health care or roughly US$10,000 per capita. Canadians spend roughly 11 percent of their GDP, or US$5,000 per capita.

But up to 40 per cent of “taxes” in Canada are earmarked for health care costs which means that they are not taxes, but insurance premiums for Cadillac coverage that is unlimited and without deductibles.

This changes the comparison.

Taking OECD’s latest per capita tax figures in 2010, Americans collect US$11,365 per capita in taxes and Canadians US$14,693 per capita. But Canadian taxes included US$3,000 in health care benefits that year while most of the U.S. taxes collected was allocated to non-health care expenditures.

If taken into consideration, Canadians are not paying higher taxes than Americans do. In 2010, about US$3,000 of Canadian per capita taxes of US$14,693 went toward health care while a minuscule portion of the US$11,365 collected from Americans went to theirs.

So, the collection was probably pretty similar and the quality of life very different. That year Americans spent US$8,500 per capital on health care in addition to taxes they paid.

Numbers matter.

They indicate that, contrary to what President Trump has been saying, Americans do not pay the highest taxes in the world. They pay lower taxes than most developed countries or Canada but pay the highest health care costs in the world which makes their costs higher than most others.

Canadians should not lose any sleep over Republican deep tax cuts that have been proposed. Even if they become law, which is doubtful, Canada’s corporations will still be competitive and our citizens better off than theirs.

Americans must fix health care and Canadian governments must control spending, not raise taxes.

As for trade, Canadians have nothing to worry about. New figures show that the Americans enjoy a surplus with Canada, not a deficit, and the two will continue to enjoy the world’s most successful and harmonious partnership.