Mr. Speaker, last month, for the first time in 22 years, Canada's national high school debating team won the world championships.
This was a true team Canada with members from across the country: from Halifax, Lyle Dobbin, Andrew Morrison and Vinayak Mishra; from Winnipeg, Sarah Levy; from Calgary, Veenu Goswami and Keenan MacNeal; and from Vancouver, Iqbal Kassam, Jonathan Carson and Sophie Bird.
In fact, I recently was a judge at the provincial championship debates where Iqbal and Jonathan did an incredible and outstanding job. The national team, despite being separated by thousands of kilometres, prepared over Skype and email before arriving in Doha, Qatar for the World Schools Debating Championships, the Olympics of debating. They bested the best debaters from 57 countries before beating team England on an 8 to 3 decision in the championship round.
I congratulate every member of the team and Coach Tracey Lee. They have done Canada proud.