Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Ordinary Members are sometimes criticized because they have become very well organized and effective. During the last Assembly, a process was initiated to hold government accountable but it was not as effective as it is now. One of our failures was the unsuccessful attempt to prevent our participation at Expo in Seville. A coalition of Members of the Standing Committee on Finance, Mr. Pollard, and the previous Minister of Economic Development and Tourism, Mr. Wray, convinced the Assembly that our participation would be a good thing. I predicted it would be an unmitigated disaster. Although we await with interest the result of the internal audit, we already know it was a misguided, crackpot, ill-conceived, warped, obliquitous, grandiose misadventure of the worst possible kind. I include myself among those ordinary Members of the 11th Assembly who should be scorned, ridiculed and maligned because, despite our numbers, we failed to prevent an almost felonious squandering of millions of taxpayers' dollars.

I have visited Spain on and off since the 1950s and have a special affection for the country. When we debated our participation, I was amused at the vision of feeding gourmet meals to poor people who traditionally attend grand events with enough food and drink of their own to feed the entire family for a week. The debate over our participation during the last Assembly is a classic case of how intelligent people, in this Assembly, were blinded by a magnificent vision of the Northwest Territories competing with the nations of the world in a world market and winning.

We were blinded by Mr. Wray's persuasive vision of northern products invading the European and Japanese markets because the north American population was too small to handle our huge economy. We behaved like a desperate third world country begging for attention. It was the ultimate ego trip.