Utility Farmers Win the 2025 Canadian Universities Debating Championships
The 2025 Canadian Universities Debating Championships took place on November 22–23 at Dalhousie University’s Studley Campus in Halifax, bringing together approximately 60 university debate teams from across Canada.
Competing in the British Parliamentary format, teams completed five preliminary rounds before advancing to the novice and open elimination stages. Motions covered education reform, religion and LGBTQ+ advocacy, professional sports salary caps, relationship transparency, mortgage policy and international intervention.
Jaleelah Ammar and Anders Cairns Woodruff, competing as Utility Farmers, captured the open championship after a consistently strong tournament. The pair recorded several of the highest publicly available preliminary-round scores, including a combined score of 166 in both the third and fourth rounds.
The championship concluded with a final debate on whether the United States should intervene militarily against the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. In the novice division, EDS WS, represented by Oliver Smith and Tyson Wong, defeated Queen’s University’s Coffee Chatters to claim the novice title.
Organized under the Canadian University Society for Intercollegiate Debate, CUDC 2025 combined demanding motions, a compressed two-day schedule and some of the strongest university debating talent in the country.
