MWM in Brussels crucial to moving forward

Canadian presidency to continue focus on training

and long-term care

By Captain Mark Giles

The mid-winter meeting in Brussels provides an opportunity to re-new our commitment to several ongoing CIOR initiatives, including the provision of valuable officer training, the post-deployment care study aimed at ensuring the long-term healthcare of military reservists, and employer support for reserve deployments.

Making progress towards these worthwhile objectives requires support at the CIOR committee level.

≥Participation in our universal-access committees is the key to our work over the next two years,≤ said Capt(N) Carman McNary, CIOR president. ≥I encourage every delegation to assign a representative to these committees, in particular those responsible for civil-military cooperation, legal, and defence attitudes and security issues.≤

With the professional development of reservists, especially young officers, a top priority, the only way to encourage strong participation in our programs is to focus on the delivery of quality training. This requires careful planning and committee involvement.

The winter and summer meetings are a time to re-new old acquaintances and develop new ones. They are also a time to work with other delegations towards our objectives, ensuring we achieve measurable results. Participation in CIOR events can be a lot of fun – they should be. They should also be a time for serious thinking, discussion and, most of all, action.

Brussels is an important step towards our IBM in Toronto, which moves us towards the summer congress in Riga, Latvia. Each meeting strengthens our organization and moves us forward together as we support reservists serving their countries around the world.  

≥I encourage all CIOR officers to get involved – either as part of the committee process or in some other meaningful way,≤ said Capt(N) McNary.