On 19 September, CIC Victoria held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and also heard from the Directors of the Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) and the Centre for Global Studies (CFGS) at the University of Victoria (UVic). Recently, CIC Victoria, CAPI and the CFGS have partnered on several events touching on a variety of subjects. The relationship with the CFGS has been especially strong and directed at promoting a foreign-policy focused annual student essay contest for students attending UVic and Royal Roads University (RRU). For 2019, the essay contest will be open to students from Vancouver Island University (VIU) and Camosun College as well.

During the AGM, Chris Kilford, President of CIC Victoria took a look back at the events the branch had held since the last AGM including 8 lunches, 9 Politics-in-the-Pub sessions (PiP), 1 dinner and many academic outreach activities with UVic, RRU and VIU. In February 2018, he noted, there was a record turnout for our former Canadian Ambassador to China with 171 members and guests packing into the Union Club for lunch. Chris also noted that for the fall of 2018 a full slate of events would be presented including PiP’s featuring Ms. Corey Levine who recently spent a year with the European Union military mission in Mali, Dr. Mohan Malik from Hawaii’s Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies speaking on ‘Strategic Posturing in the Indo-Asia-Pacific’ and CIC Senior Fellow, Dr. Jon Allen who will focus on Israel and Palestinian issues.

Student outreach, Chris also noted, had taken on greater importance over the last year. And when it comes to engaging with students and building our student membership base, like last year he added, CIC Victoria will continue to support the UVic Model United Nations (UN) Club conference here in Victoria and the VIU Model UN Club conference in Nanaimo in October 2018 and February 2019 respectively.

On the membership front it was also good news. Last September, Chris mentioned, CIC Victoria had 238 members but this number had since grown to 308 members. In particular, he noted the growth in student numbers from just one or two last year to over 20 now.

In his concluding comments and looking to the future, Chris remarked that CIC Victoria members clearly share a passion for global affairs and with this in mind the CIC Victoria Executive Committee (ExCom), of which he is immensely proud, would continue to bring to the membership the best possible speakers on a wide range of domestic and international issues of importance to Canada. In addition, the ExCom would strive to build bridges between our more experienced members and our student and young professionals to better prepare them for the challenges ahead. Finally, he added, CIC Victoria would strive to become a more diverse and inclusive branch where the incredible experiences of our wider membership could be shared with those new to Canada.