David Collins was a career foreign service officer for over thirty years serving latterly as Canadian ambassador or high commissioner to Romania with concurrent accreditation to Bulgaria and Moldova, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan. He holds BA, BComm and MSc degrees from Queens, Concordia and Durham universities.
As well as serving on the Victoria executive of the CIC, he is currently a fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, a director of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute and a member of the programme advisory committee of the Canadian Ditchley Foundation. In his early life he was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy.
He served as a deputy warden of St Bartholomew's Church in Ottawa and has been licensed by the Bishops of Gibraltar and Ottawa as a lay assistant. He has attended the Cathedral since coming to Victoria in December 2012.