The annual Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defence conference begins Monday at the Victoria Conference Centre and will focus on strengthening collective security.
Gen. Jennie Carignan, Canada’s chief of the defence staff, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, are co-hosting the three-day conference, which was first held in 1998.
The conference typically includes military leaders from countries such as Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Colin Chia, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Victoria, said he’s not expecting policy announcements to come out of the conference, as attendees are “not really decision-makers themselves, but really the ones who execute them.”