OTTAWA—Conservative candidate Brad Butt could have invoked the name of Zakaria Amara, the Islamic extremist behind the terror plot to blow up buildings in downtown Toronto.

Or, if he wanted to make his case for the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act known as Bill C-24 — which includes a key provision that allows the federal government to revoke the Canadian citizenship from dual citizens convicted of terrorism, high treason or other serious offences — without naming anyone who could actually have that happen to them, he could have referred to a hypothetical person.

Instead, in an interview with TAG TV earlier in the campaign, the Conservative candidate seeking re-election in the Greater Toronto Area riding of Mississauga-Streetsville decided to drop the name of New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair.

“The leader of the New Democratic Party is a citizen of two countries. He’s a Canadian citizen and he’s a French citizen. So, I guess if Mr. Mulcair committed some act of treason or something, he possibly, under this legislation, could have his Canadian citizenship revoked, because he is a citizen of another country,” Butt told interviewer Haleema Sadia as he was explaining how this legislation would not apply to people who held only Canadian citizenship, because it would go against international law to render someone stateless.

“I think the confusion is around people and the line that people are second-class citizens. They are not. If you are a law-abiding citizen, there is nothing in this act that has changed and has put your citizenship in jeopardy at all,” Butt said in the interview that was uploaded to YouTube Aug. 5 and then posted Tuesday on a website called meetheharpergang.com.

Mulcair — who obtained his French citizenship through his Paris-born and raised wife, Catherine P. Mulcair — has said he decided to do so after he was separated from his family for half an hour at a Madrid airport about 25 years ago because he did not have the same travel documents.

His wife ran unsuccessfully for a spot on the Assemblée des Français de l’étranger, a political body representing French citizens abroad, in 2009, and it was through her that Mulcair was also able to vote in French elections. After winning the NDP leadership in 2012, Mulcair told reporters he would no longer exercise that franchise.

Mulcair kept his French citizenship after becoming official Opposition leader, as did former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, but said in 2012 that would change if he ever got the keys to 24 Sussex Drive. “If I were to become prime minister, I would only hold Canadian citizenship,” Mulcair told Don Martin at CTV at the time.

Butt did not respond to an interview request left with his campaign office Tuesday to ask why he had chosen to bring Mulcair into the conversation about an issue that has since made bigger waves on the campaign trail.

The National Post reported Sept. 26 that Amara, a Jordanian-Canadian who was the mastermind of the 2006 Toronto terror plot, had been stripped of his Canadian citizenship.

Maclean’s magazine reported Sept. 30 that the federal government is attempting to do the same to Saad Gaya, another member of the so-called Toronto 18, who was born in Canada to parents who had previously given up their Pakistani citizenship.

Brad Lavigne, NDP senior campaign adviser, accused Butt of sowing fear and division.

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“It is in keeping with the Conservatives’ politics of fear and division that Mr. Butt speaks like this. It’s beneath where voters are and it’s just another example of why so many people want to stop Stephen Harper and bring change to Ottawa,” Lavigne said Tuesday.

Butt is running against Liberal candidate Gagan Sikand, NDP candidate Fayaz Karim, Green candidate Chris Hill and Yegor Tarazevich of the Christian Heritage Party.