Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are being accused of hyprocrisy for turning a mock guillotine targeting him at a recent protest into a money-making machine.

The party is using the incident as the basis for its latest fundraising appeal to donors on email, with the subject line “They want to cut off his head.”

“Protesters showed up last week at Queen’s Park waving communist flags,” Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said in a one-page letter asking supporters to donate at least $1.

“And they brought out a guillotine. Yup. A guillotine.”

Opposition parties said the tactic is unseemly, particularly because the premier’s office complained to police about the guillotine.

“You can’t on the one hand say these things are odious and then use them for your own fundraising purposes,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath told reporters. “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

A high-ranking member of Ford’s cabinet distanced himself from the appeal to donors.

“I haven’t seen that email,” said Treasury Board president Peter Bethlenfalvy. “I’d have to take a look at it. It doesn’t sound like the way to go, but others will comment on that.”

The May Day protest last Wednesday on the front lawn of the Legislature involved several hundred demonstrators, including unidentified people with Soviet-era flags and a two-metre high mock guillotine made of wood, complete with faux bloodstains.

On social media, a woman wearing a black bandana was pictured holding a sign that read, “May history repeat itself, chop, chop.”

The premier later said the protesters “went a little too far” and the PCs forwarded a complaint about the incident to the Ontario Provincial Police, with Ford aides also taking to Twitter to complain about the lack of media coverage of the protest.

In the letter to supporters, MacLeod wrote “nobody works harder for the people than Doug Ford” and maintained, “the sky is not falling.”

“The unions want to you think we’re slashing health care and education. That isn’t true. Not one bit. We’re increasing both health care and education,” she added, a reference to a slight rise in budgets for both ministries as the provincial government cuts back funding for public health and increases class sizes — moves that have infuriated municipalities, teachers and students.

Given that MacLeod last week called the bloodied guillotine “disgusting” and “a sick act,” it’s shocking that the fundraising appeal email is in her name, said interim Liberal Leader John Fraser.

“She could just spare us all the drama,” Fraser added. “The minister of children and community services feigns outrage and then on the next day repeats the same thing and asks people for money. I can’t take her seriously. It’s a joke.”

“It’s so hypocritical for them to be complaining about it and now using it as a fundraising tool,” said Green Leader Mike Schreiner.

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