In a speech billed as “An Ambitious Plan to Unleash Canada’s Productive Forces”, Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier added to his already long list of proposed economic reforms by announcing he would eliminate the capital gains tax, lower the corporate tax rate, and expand and make permanent the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance.

After summarizing concerning trends of low growth in advanced economies coupled with low interest rates and disappointing productivity growth, the libertarian Bernier told the Canadian Club in Toronto Tuesday he believes the Liberal approach — to “borrow, borrow, borrow and spend, spend, spend” — is not the answer.

“I don’t buy this solution of more borrowing and spending. There is just one word to accurately describe Keynesianism: nonsense,” he said.

The alternative he proposed, which follows a summer full of proposals to deregulate the Canadian economy, is three-pronged.

The first prong is to abolish the capital gains tax, applied to the sale of capital property, such as buildings, bonds, and shares. Bernier estimates doing so would cost $3 billion a year — or one per cent of government revenue.

“The capital gains tax…discourages investors from selling old assets and investing in more productive new ones because that sale triggers the tax. Getting rid of it will not only bring more capital, it will increase the overall efficiency of capital,” he said to applause.

“This may sound like a radical proposal, but it’s not. There was no capital gains tax in Canada until 1972.”

The second prong of his plan is to make the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA) a permanent feature of the Canadian tax system and extend it to all sectors.

Introduced in 2007, the ACCA allows businesses a more generous write-off of investments in manufacturing and processing machinery against their taxable income. It was extended for 10 years in the Conservatives’ 2015 budget, but Bernier wants it permanently enshrined in the Canadian tax code.

“I see no reason to restrict this measure to manufacturing and clean energy equipment. To avoid distortions, there should be a level playing field,” he added. “It would also apply to investment in telecommunications, in oil and gas, fisheries, agriculture or any other sector that provides value-adding jobs to Canadians.”

Bernier’s third proposal is to reduce the corporate tax rate from 15 per cent down to 10.

“One of our government’s major fiscal achievements was to reduce the corporate income tax from 22 per cent in 2007 to 15 per cent in 2012. We can do better,” he said.

“Reducing corporate income tax doesn’t necessarily mean that government revenues go down. A lower tax rate attracts more foreign companies and leads to the creation of more companies in Canada.”

Though Bernier argued his three measures will likely reduce government revenues “temporarily”, he also plans to drastically cut billions in subsidies to business, which a recent study by the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary — he noted — were worth $16 billion in 2013.

Precisely which of those subsidies will be on the chopping block, however, Bernier would not say.

“Several of these measures may be worth keeping,” he said. “But many others are just inefficient ways for the government to choose winners, bail out unprofitable ventures, promote some bureaucratic fad, or buy political support with taxpayers’ money.”