Iain Black calls himself a “turnaround guy.”
And the candidate in the B.C. Conservative Party leadership race says B.C. needs a turnaround.
Black visited Jitter Beans Coffee House in Lumby Friday, Feb. 27, to meet with the public, hear their thoughts and concerns, and make his case to succeed John Rustad as leader of the province’s current Opposition party.
After mingling with local residents, the former BC Liberal minister spoke to The Morning Star about his reasons for running to lead the Conservatives, and why he thinks he’s the best person for the job.
On the latter question, for Black it boils down to his track record of turning companies around — he joked that he was the CEO of half a dozen companies, was brought in to fix them, “and didn’t lose one.” As well, it comes down to his belief that this private-sector skill of his can translate to turning around a province.
B.C.’s deficit is set to rise to $13.3 billion next year, up from $9.6 billion, before coming down to $12.1 billion and $11.4 billion the following years, according to the 2026 budget. Over the next three years, the provincial debt and interest bite will accelerate. Total debt for this current year is projected to hit $154 billion.
Conservative voices have called these figures the result of “a decade of decline,” including finance critic Peter Milobar, who Black is competing against for the top Conservative job.
Black believes the province’s debt is out of control, and that younger generations will be shouldering the high interest rates without enough in the way of benefits from the NDP’s spending.
And while Milobar has the MLA endorsements and the experience to make him a formidable leadership candidate, Black said MLA endorsements have not always been predictive of who wins the race, and added that his time spent in prominent positions within a sitting government is the experience that matters most.
He made an ice hockey analogy, saying being a member of the Official Opposition like Milobar is like being a season ticket holder, but being a member of government is like being on the ice.
Black said this as someone who appreciates Milobar and who also has plenty of respect for all of the Conservative leadership candidates that have put their names forward. He simply believes his experience as former premier Gordon Campbell’s Minister of Labour, or as his Minister of Small Business, Technology and Economic Development, is indispensable in terms of putting the best candidate forward to win the next provincial election and then lead the province if the Conservatives get the votes.
“The (Conservative) members should insist on having somebody who has a proven track record of leading something, that you have actually had the responsibility for a group of people to achieve an outcome where there have been expectations placed on people, measurements, processes to make sure we’re tracking to a plan, and accountability for outcomes,” Black said.
“We must have a leader who has that track record. I’ve done it several times.”
Following his three cabinet appointments in Campbell’s government, Black took a break from politics in 2011 to serve as the president and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade for eight years — “the largest business organization, predominantly small businesses, between here and Toronto,” he said.
This, he said, was yet another turnaround job.
“It was hemorrhaging money, and it had about $2 million in cash debt, which is like go-to-the-bank debt, not book debt. And they lost a lot of members, and they kind of lost their way,” Black said. “And that’s exactly what I do, I reinvent organizations, rebrand them, refocus them, get everybody focused on the same page and head down that path and get them back to profitability.”
Black was running a global software firm last April when he got the call to come back to politics. He was an acclaimed Conservative candidate in the riding of Coquitlam — Port Coquitlam in the 2025 federal election.
The election didn’t go the way he hoped or expected, in both his riding and on the national scale.
“I was one of those guys in January of last year who was pretty sure we were going to Ottawa because we were all 25 points ahead,” Black said. “We did a poll in my riding, and we were sitting pretty. And then, of course, we watched that change over that nine or 10 weeks, which was historic. I doubt it will happen again in my lifetime to see such a shift like that.”
After the election loss, Black took some time off. He watched his 26-year-old son get married last summer.
Once more, he was drawn back into the political sphere, this time by Ed Fast, a former international trade minister in the Stephen Harper government. Black called Fast “one of the most honourable and decent men ever to get elected.”
So when Fast called Black in November 2025 and suggested that the B.C. Conservatives might be looking for a new leader (Rustad would calamitously resign from the position mere weeks later), Black knew he had to take his advice to throw his hat in the ring.
He decided to run for two key reasons.
“One is I’m desperately worried about the state of the province. It doesn’t matter your political stripe. The current environment is not sustainable. Financially, we’ve now committed our grandchildren to paying off the debts of every dollar that we spend right now. Any new dollar spent today, we’re not paying off in our lifetime and that, to me, is immoral,” he said.
The second reason is that he feels he is the person who can create “transformative change” in the province, as he put it.
“The B.C. Conservative Party is a fascinating opportunity. I know what it takes to fix the province because I’m the only guy in this contest who’s actually been at the cabinet table and at the treasury board table.”
He said while the Conservative Party has been around “forever” it’s current incarnation is very new, having been formed via the “shotgun wedding” with the now defunct BC United Party about 16 months ago. The party has done well in that short amount of time, said Black, but without a full complement of 93 riding associations constituted, there’s work to be done.
Black thinks it’s work he is well suited for.
The Conservative leadership race wraps up May 30.