Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I'll be supporting this motion, and I'll say right now that when it comes to these types of motions about the rules of the House, there's no Cabinet position so all Cabinet Ministers are going to vote how they feel. You know, I won't presuppose the outcome of -- you know, if this motion passes, I won't presuppose the outcome of the committee report. I won't presuppose that it will recommend that all -- that we allow complaints to the Integrity Commissioner for everything said on Facebook that offends someone. I mean, if that's what the report says, then obviously I would vote against that. So I'm not scared that we're going to wind up in a situation where any time anyone opens their mouth outside of this House we'll have an Integrity Commissioner complaint. I think that's a bit much.

But we are in a post truth era, Mr. Speaker, where truth is beginning to take a backseat to a motion and to people's personal beliefs. People live in echo chambers on social media. They don't bother searching out the truth. They see an official, an elected official, and they make an assumption that what that person is saying is true. We know that's not the case. We see what happens when elected officials go on social media, spread misinformation, spread disinformation. It threatens democracy. The entire world right now is in a crisis, a democratic crisis, and social media and the comments made by politicians on social media have a role to play in that. So I don't think this is farfetched, the idea that we want to look at that sphere.

I am, you know -- I think it's worthwhile to examine it. It's going to have to be some very well-crafted recommendations that really don't infringe on free speech to the greatest extent possible for me to support it. You know, even standing up here, you know, no matter what comes out of this, I'm probably leaning -- right now I'm leaning towards well, maybe I won't support whatever comes out of this report, but I want to see what comes out of the report. I think it's worthwhile to have that conversation. There's been -- you know, I hear about the comments that people make on social media, elected officials, and then I hear what the results of that. That empowers other people to make similar comments. It empowers them themselves to go after elected officials. There's real life consequences of the comments that officials in this territory make for other people, for those other people's families. So this isn't, you know -- this isn't a situation where we haven't seen any sort of impact from these comments. This is a response to things that are actually happening today. And I know the Integrity Commissioner was quoted earlier, and I also have a quote from the Integrity Commissioner from an October 8th, 2024, ruling: There are limits on what a Member may do and how they may go about what they do. Being a Member is not carte blanche to make or repeat unverified or unfounded allegations. Members have an obligation to inform themselves about the facts.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think that's a very high bar, and that's my concern. I want Members to inform themselves about the facts and I want Members, when conveying information, for that information to be factual as far as the Member is aware and that they've done their due diligence. There's, frankly, too much nonsense out there. There's too many comments that are made outside of this House that everyone knows definitely can't be made inside this House. But they have the same effect. Because of social media, actions outside of this House have a far greater reach than the actions inside this House. And so I think that it's worthwhile for us to at least begin to look into this because we could be heading down a path of the United States. We see instances in Canada where we are going down that slippery slope where social media comments are eroding democracy, are empowering, emboldening people who would do damage to our democracy.

So, Mr. Speaker, I think that this is something where we want to get ahead of this. We don't want to be talking in a number of years about why we never looked into this at all. So I'm supportive of this motion. Thank you.