SBP mayoral candidate focused on attracting business, retaining youth

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Self-made businessman John Schnurr, now retired, said he’ll focus on attracting investment into the community and retaining youth if he’s successful in his bid for mayor of South Bruce Peninsula.

“I’ve been in business all my life,” Schnurr said in an interview.

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At 16, Schnurr said he left home and worked as a cook. Being from a large, poor family, formal education was beyond his reach, so Schnurr educated himself by reading books “every spare moment I had.”

Schnurr turned that knowledge into a variety of entrepreneurial pursuits, including becoming “the first paralegal in Ontario,” becoming a mortgage broker who grew a business to five offices with 27 employees which he then sold, building the first telehealth network for the Manitoba government, and providing telecommunications to 34 countries in North and South America.

Born and raised in Walkerton, this is Schnurr’s first run for a seat on municipal council.

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“I’ve never been politically active,” he said.

Schnurr, who lives with his wife Lynne on a large property on Elm Street in Wiarton, said he’s running for council because he recognizes “huge opportunity” on the peninsula, but feels the area’s resources aren’t being utilized or capitalized on.

Having dealt with international investors, and with his four decades of international business experience, Schnurr said, “I can bring investment into the community.”

“I’m running for mayor to develop an economy,” he said.

Schnurr contrasts Wiarton and the Bruce Peninsula to Cape May in the United States.

“It’s on a little peninsula in New Jersey. …the area just breathes entrepreneurialism,” he said.

Here, “we’re bringing in hundreds of tourists but we have no service,” he said.

“We have 12,500 cars a day going through town. They don’t stop.”

He’d like to see a good hotel on Highway 6 to accommodate tourists and wants the town to negotiate with the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario to ease the restrictions put on small communities.

While downtown Wiarton is doing “just fine,” Schnurr said, “we’ve got to do something with our waterfront.”

Building “strong partnerships with the surrounding communities,” including working with First Nations, is important, Schnurr said.

As an example, he’d like to see South Bruce Peninsula work “in tandem” with Georgian Bluffs to develop an industrial park at the Wiarton Keppel International Airport, which he called a “great resource.”

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“I want to be involved with them because they’re progressive. They’re moving forward,” he said, while South Bruce Peninsula “is shrinking.”

One of his many past businesses was a company in the U.S. that built landfill sites, Schnurr said. He’d like to apply that experience to attract private enterprise investment in the local landfill to capture resources like aluminum, copper and plastic that are currently being buried or burned.

“They will develop a plant here if they’re given the opportunity and the right concessions.”

The technology is already there to utilize the waste, he said.

Schnurr also said the area’s aging population has to be addressed.

“We’ve got a population base here that’s getting up there in age. I think 50 per cent of our town is over 60. We have to attract youth. The only way you attract youth is by giving them an opportunity; giving them a future.”