dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

>Here's a lesser-known connection between the winner of this year's first U.S. presidential contest and the home and native land of his birth: Canada's prime minister recalls debating Ted Cruz.

>The Calgary-born, Texas-bred senator who stormed out of the gate Monday with a win in Iowa's Republican caucuses was once a stellar university debater, ranked No. 1 in the U.S.

>Cruz's opponents included a contemporary from Montreal — a prime minister's son and prime-minister-to-be who decided to get involved with the debate club at the urging of friends at McGill University.

>Justin Trudeau first publicly referred to that old encounter during a speech early last year when he was still leader of Canada's third party, and the senator had yet to announce his presidential bid.

>Trudeau told a group of fellow McGill alumni that he'd dabbled in debating and had once gone up against Cruz in a tournament at Yale, adding dryly: "He hasn't changed very much."

>He elaborated slightly in an interview with The Canadian Press last June. By then, Cruz had announced his presidential bid but Trudeau was still in opposition.

>While the details are a bit hazy, Trudeau recalls an opponent who came prepared to dominate — and, apparently, Cruz did.

>''If I recall correctly it was about an obscure monetary policy element that he had done an awful lot of research on," Trudeau said in that pre-election interview.

>"His poor opposition had no real capacity to rebut. It was a focus very much on winning the debate, rather than on any sort of fair chance to have a good and robust debate. But that's the way university debating was played at that particular moment.''

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-cruz-debate-1.3430988