Doug Ford is stepping up his war of words against Kathleen Wynne, vowing to unleash “outside” auditors on her if he wins the June election.

Echoing Donald Trump's “lock her up” mantra about Hillary Clinton, Ford told a crowd in Brockville on Tuesday that Wynne’s Liberals are up to no good.

The rookie Progressive Conservative leader said that if he is elected, he’ll commission an outside audit of Wynne’s “reckless spending” on his first day in office.

“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 said.

Livingston, the last chief of staff to former premier Dalton McGuinty, is free on bail after being sentenced last week to four months in jail for the wiping of computer hard drives related to the cancelled gas plants affair.

While neither McGuinty nor Wynne was implicated in the investigation or subsequent trial, Ford said the conviction demonstrated the need for “responsibility, accountability, and trust in government” after almost 15 years of Liberal rule.

“Ontario deserves answers about how big Kathleen Wynne’s mess really is,” he said.

Ford cited auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who has been critical of the Liberals’ accounting and spending practices, but also promised outside auditors would “probe the entirety of Kathleen Wynne’s fiscal mess and follow the money to see how your tax dollars are really being spent.”

Ford — who has bristled at being compared to Trump — is unhappy that Wynne and her ministers are promoting her Liberal government’s March 28 budget at events across the province.

Coincidentally, it was at his news conference during the budget’s media lock-up that the PC leader first publicly used the incarceration imagery.

“The only people that should be locked up are the Liberals for this budget,” he quipped to reporters.

In the Legislature, Tory MPP Jim Wilson said the Liberals “are clearly campaigning on the taxpayer dime each and every day.”

“Every year, we bring in a budget,” Wynne countered. “We go out into the province and talk about that budget.

“That is what we are doing. That is what their party did. That is what the (NDP government) did. That is what governments do, to make sure people understand what is in the budget so that they will know what to expect,” she said.

But the premier took a partisan shot of her own at both Wilson and Ford.

“I completely understand why he doesn’t want me to be talking about a fair-wage policy in this province. I completely understand why he doesn’t want me to be talking about childcare, care for seniors or more funding for hospitals,” said

Doug Ford has been named leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives. The former Toronto city councillor says the other leadership candidates will play a “critical role” if the party forms government after the June election. (The Canadian Press)

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“None of those things would be possible under their leader, Doug Ford, because he’s going to cut across government.”

Post-election audits are not unusual at Queen’s Park.

When the Liberals first took office in 2003, they hired former provincial auditor Erik Peters, who had retired two weeks earlier, to examine the books of the just-defeated Conservative government.

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