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“Hear, hear,” Bay Street’s finest applauded as Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier proposed doing away with Canada’s 50 per cent capital gains tax, which brings in about $3 billion in annual revenues for Ottawa.

It is “a tax on investment,” he told a Canadian Club luncheon at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. “Young entrepreneurs and innovative small businesses often have difficulty finding financial backing for their projects. Abolishing the capital gains tax will encourage everybody to save more and invest more. It will increase the supply and lower the cost of capital for these new firms.”

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Thusly, as prime minister, would Maxime Bernier finally slay Canada’s low-productivity dragon and boost growth.

“Not very surprising stuff coming from (him),” was Laval University economist Stephen Gordon’s basic take on the speech.

The former cabinet minister also proposed “to make Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA) a permanent feature of the Canadian tax system and extend it to all sectors,” lower the corporate tax rate to 10 per cent, and eliminate most subsidies to business. Research and development funding might make sense, he mused later, but certainly not direct subsidies to the likes of Bombardier and GM.