Progressive Conservative leadership frontrunner Patrick Brown warns if centrist rival Christine Elliott wins, the party will lose‎.

In the final debate before the May 9 convention, Brown predicted Elliott would turn the Tories into “Liberal Light” with voters barely able to discern policy differences from Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Grits.

“If you want more of the same, we’re going to lose,” the Barrie MP said Thursday.

“Obviously, this leadership is a choice between a Liberal Light version of the party and those that believe that we can win as Conservatives,” he said in the TVOntario debate that will be aired Friday at 8 p.m. on The Agenda with Steve Paikin.

“If we keep on committing the same approach, the same mistakes, as we’ve done before we’ll find a way to blow it again.”

But Elliott said Brown would hand over the PC party to social conservatives who are outside the political mainstream.

“Patrick represents the constituency that I’m concerned about. The social conservative group within the party would take over and I think that’s not where people want us to go,” the Whitby—Oshawa MPP told moderator Paikin.

“Most of the people in Ontario are in the centre right but not that far right and I just don’t think we will win if we go out with that kind of position in the next campaign,” she said.

Brown, 36, said Elliott, 60, represents the old-guard approach employed by former leader Tim Hudak, who lost the June 12 election after promising to eliminate 100,000 public-service jobs over four years.

“Our party needs a reset. The gang that has been running our party for the last few elections, whether it’s faith-based funding or 100,000 job cuts, it’s been a top-down approach,” he said, referring to former leader John Tory (open John Tory's policard)’s doomed 2007 campaign that pledged religious school funding.

“The party establishment certainly isn’t supporting me. I’m not going to owe them any favours,” said Brown, who touted the significant inroads he has made into the GTA’s diverse cultural communities that traditionally haven’t supported the provincial Tories.

Elliott countered that she wasn’t to blame for Hudak’s campaign even though she was his deputy leader.

“It’s not a fair point. I didn’t have anything to do with that decision with respect to the 100,000 jobs. I found out about it at the same time that everybody else did through the media,” she said.

“I didn’t know anything about it because I wasn’t involved in the campaign team. So there’s no question that we need to change the process by which we select policies in the next election.”

The MPP also took Brown to task because he does not represent a riding at Queen’s Park.

“I have a seat and we don’t have a lot of time to get ready for the next election. We need to hit the ground running. I have nine years of experience in provincial politics. I’m ready to get going on May 11,” said Elliott.

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Almost 80,000 Conservatives who purchased a $10 membership card are eligible to vote for the new leader.

Ballots will be cast in all Ontario ridings on Sunday and next Thursday, with the results announced the following Saturday at the Toronto Congress Centre near Pearson International Airport.

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