PC leader ‘disturbing,’ Wynne warns

Urges voters to prevent Conservative majority

Warning that Doug Ford is “even more disturbing to people than we might have thought,” Kathleen Wynne has stepped up her plea to voters to prevent a Progressive Conservative majority win.

Two days after conceding that she won’t be premier after Thursday’s election because the Liberals are doomed, Wynne returned to Queen’s Park to hammer Ford.

“I think there are thousands of Conservatives across the province who really don’t believe that they can vote for Doug Ford,” the Liberal leader said Monday.

“That’s been one of the big things that has changed this election from what we might have thought it was going to be to what it actually is,” she said.

“One of the real disrupters in this election campaign has been t that Doug Ford turned out to be, I think, even more disturbing to people than we might have thought.”

Wynne said the rookie Tory leader’s failure to release a fully costed platform should sound alarm bells.

“His lack of a coherent plan, his lack of any substantive policy and just a promise to cut across government and cut across services that people rely on … has been a very different position than people might have expected,” she said.

Ford, now ducking reporters with unpublicized appearances that are not on his official daily itinerary, has limited his exposure to media since the launch of the May 9 campaign. His tightly controlled news conferences sometimes feature as few as four or five questions from journalists.

In contrast to his freewheeling style as a Toronto city councillor, Ford has denied almost all interview requests. But Conservative insiders, believing a ma- jority government is in sight, insist they are merely playing it safe out of concern Ford will say or do something that could hurt them at the ballot box.

Despite the fact that the Tories appeared poised to win the most seats Thursday, Wynne said the Liberals will not release a list of ridings where progressive voters should vote for the NDP.

“You know what? I have a lot of faith in the people of the province to figure it out. They know in their riding what the lay of the land is. They’ll make their decisions,” she said.