Likening Doug Ford to Donald Trump, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne says the Progressive Conservative leader is a “bully” who tells “lies.”

In a stunning broadside against Ford three weeks before the official start of the June 7 election, Wynne said “Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump and that’s because he is like Donald Trump.”

“He believes in an ugly, vicious brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He’ll say anything about anyone at any time because — just like Trump — it is all about him,” the premier said Wednesday at Sunnybrook Hospital.

“That’s how Trump campaigned in 2016 and that’s how Ford is campaigning right now. I guarantee you that it will get worse before it gets better,” she said.

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“We saw it this week when Doug lied — flat-out lied — about his appalling comments about families living with autism, lacking the courage to admit the truth and own up to his own words. He took the coward’s way out and he denied the undeniable.”

That was a reference to Ford claiming he never said in 2014 that an Etobicoke home for children with autism and developmental disabilities was an “absolute nightmare” that “ruined the community.”

“You’re going to hear a lot of lies. Desperate lies,” the Conservative leader said Sunday as he unveiled his campaign bus.

The statement, made while he was a Toronto councillor, was widely reported at the time.

During a campaign stop in Cobourg on Wednesday, CBC reporter Mike Crawley played a recording of Wynne’s attack for Ford.

“She’s getting desperate — a desperate, desperate person. Oh boy,” said the PC leader as the tape rolled.

“Kathleen Wynne, she can fight an election in another country. I’m focused on the people of Ontario,” he said to cheers from supporters.

“Mike, we’ve seen this trick before. She’s trying to hoodwink the people, she thinks she’s smarter than the people. I work for the people; she believes the people work for her.”

Wynne, who is trailing Ford in every public opinion poll, made her comments after the Tory leader had suggested Tuesday that Liberals could end up behind bars after his “outside audit” of the books if he wins the election.

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“If Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life, then there would be a few more Liberals joining David Livingston in jail,” Ford had said in Brockville.

Livingston, ex-chief of staff to former Dalton McGuinty, was sentenced to four months in jail last week for deleting documents.

“He all but chanted ‘Lock her up,’ talking about me,” fumed Wynne, recalling Trump’s line of attack against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Doug Ford stands for nothing other than Doug Ford. Just like Donald Trump, there is only one way to deal with this kind of behaviour: you have to stand up to him and you have to name the behaviour for what it is, because that is how you deal with a bully,” she said.

“So, I’m sorry, but not again. Not here, not in Ontario. He may be Donald Trump, but I’m not Hillary Clinton … and Ontario is not the United States of America.”

Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod was incredulous at Wynne’s “bizarre” and “desperate” attack on Ford three weeks before the May 9 writ drop.

“Her only hope is to make this campaign about anything other her record,” said MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton).

“She’s running in a different country against a different candidate, because she can’t defend her own record in the province of Ontario,” she said, adding Wynne “should stop lying about Doug Ford.”

“It is not any member of our party who has gone to jail.”

New Democrat MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) said the Liberal attacks are a sideshow because “only (NDP Leader) Andrea Horwath can stop Doug Ford.”

Gélinas cited polls showing 80 per cent of Ontarians believe it is time for a change, arguing that Horwath is the real alternative to Ford.

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