Newly minted PC boss Doug Ford took a big swipe at Premier Kathleen Wynne’s throne speech during a Monday night rally designed to make up for the lack of a splashy victory celebration after a chaotic Tory leadership announcement just over a week ago.

The former city councillor and brother of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford accused the Liberals of doing “anything to stay in power” with the June 7 provincial election fast approaching.

“Today Kathleen Wynne wrote a lot of cheques on the taxpayers’ back,” a feisty Ford told hundreds of supporters at the Toronto Congress Centre near Pearson airport.

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“All those cheques are going to end up bouncing.”

At every mention of Wynne’s name, the diverse band of Progressive Conservatives jeered and booed, prompting a grinning Ford to veer from the prepared text he was reading during an eight-minute speech. “We’ve got a lively crowd tonight,” he said.

Ford took the stage to the Rocky song “Eye of the Tiger” and joined hands with the three women he defeated in the brief leadership race to replace Patrick Brown, who resigned in the wake of a CTV News report on sexual misconduct allegations from two young women. Brown denies the allegations.

Ford, second-place finisher Christine Elliott — who initially refused to concede her loss of the job she had failed to win twice before — Caroline Mulroney and Tanya Granic Allen all raised their arms in the air, smiling.

But none of the women spoke, and Ford was not joined by the party’s caucus of more than two dozen MPPs on the stage at what was dubbed a “unity rally.”

Instead, Ford was introduced by new campaign chairman Dean French, who joked that the massive convention hall — where Brown won the leadership in 2015 — was booked for the whole night “just to be safe.”

Doug Ford visited the Ontario legislature on March 12 for the first time since becoming leader of the province’s Progressive Conservatives. Ford says he plans to be “out on the road” as much as possible before the June 7 election. (The Canadian Press)

That was a reference to the botched leadership announcement on March 10 at a Markham hotel, where PC official had promised to reveal the winner by mid-afternoon but snags in counting ballots delayed the news until after 10 p.m. By then, an impatient and disappointed crowd had been asked to leave because the convention room had to be cleared for a previously booked wedding.

Borrowing a phrase from former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s 2011 re-election campaign, Ford said supporters can expect “a strong, stable majority government,” and called on disaffected New Democrats and Liberals to join with the PCs to defeat Wynne after almost 15 years of Liberal rule.

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“They are terrified when they see a united party like the PC party,” proclaimed Ford. “That is their worst nightmare.”

He has yet to reveal a formal platform for the pending campaign.

To date, Ford has promised to lower hospital wait times, cut hydro rates further than Wynne’s Liberals, scrap the sexual education curriculum that was updated for the social media era, and shrink government by finding almost $6 billion in “efficiencies” he has not identified, except to say “no one is getting laid off.”

He has also mused about privatizing recreational marijuana sales in a “free market” — contrary to Wynne’s plan to open a chain of government-run stores — and requiring girls under 16 to get parental permission for abortions.

Since being elected leader, Ford and the party have overturned controversial candidate nominations in a handful of ridings and barred Brown from running as a PC candidate in June.

Correction, March 20, 2018 — A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Stephen Harper’s ill-fated 2015 campaign.

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