Scheer campaigning Saturday at The Pizza Factory

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is making two election campaign stops in the Peterborough area on Saturday.

He is scheduled to visit the Wutai Shan Buddhist Temple on Ski Hill Road north of Bethany with Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock incumbent Jamie Schmale at 9:45 a.m. and then make a stop at The Pizza Factory at Lansdowne Street West and The Parkway with Peterborough-Kawartha Conservative candidate Michael Skinner at 11 a.m.

The visit follows on the heels of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign rally at the Evinrude Centre in Peterborough on Sept. 25.

Skinner is running against Liberal incumbent Maryam Monsef, the NDP’s Candace Shaw, the Green party’s Andrew MacGregor, Alex Murphy for the People’s Party of Canada, Ken Ranney of the Stop Climate Change party and independent candidate Bob Bowers.

At a pre-election visit to Peterborough on Aug. 21, Scheer said Peterborough-Kawartha voters are dissatisfied with Monsef as MP and want change.

At the time of that visit to Pe

terborough, there was still a large homeless encampment at Victoria Park and Scheer said the Liberal government “needs to take responsibility for that.”

Scheer also praised Skinner on that visit.

Scheer said Skinner is hardworking and “he has a great reputation in developing small business. And in a place like Peterborough, that is the key.”

Scheer also made a stop in Peterborough a year earlier, in August 2018, while he was on a cross-Canada tour 14 months ahead of the election.

At that time Scheer visited the Peterborough Exhibition in Morrow Park and said he was already “optimistic” that the Conservatives will win back Peterborough-Kawartha from the Liberals in this election.

“Obviously Peterborough is an area where we’ve had support in the past, and we’d like to win that back,” he said.

The Conservative leader campaigned in Toronto on Friday morning to talk about his crime platform, which would see the Canada Border Services Agency do more to stop guns from being smuggled in from the United States.

It also promises new mandatory minimum sentences for some gang-related offences.

Yet, Scheer was still having to spend a lot of time talking about how he is in the process of renouncing the dual American-Canadian citizenship he has through his U.S.-born father, and why he had never said anything publicly about it until now. Scheer, who said he has never renewed his U.S. passport as an adult, said he did not begin the process of giving up his American citizenship until August

This was despite having decided to do so after winning the Conservative leadership race in 2017.

“It’s not a big deal in Canada for people to have dual citizenship,” Scheer said Friday morning.

The Conservatives, however, had attacked former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, as well as former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, over their dual citizenship with France.

Mulcair obtained his citizenship through his wife, who was born in France, and Dion through his mother, also born there.