Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This being Friday, I would like to speak on something half-seriously and maybe with a personal touch. I would like to speak on the burgeoning aurora tourism industry in Yellowknife.

Mr. Speaker, I had the honour of taking part in a dinner hosting 14 Koreans who made a two-day trip to Yellowknife to learn more about the magic of aurora a couple of weeks ago. The group was made up of travel writers and photographers of three major national newspapers in Korea, whose combined subscription makes up almost 60 million people in Korea in newspaper and electronic media. Also in the group were major travel operators based in Korea, as well as an employee of the Canada Tourism Commission and Air Canada, based in Korea.

Even though I was there as a Yellowknife MLA, it was personally a very moving and emotional occasion for me. Of course, I gave this great speech on how when my family moved here from Korea to Yellowknife in 1978, no one in Korea knew where Yellowknife was and there was not a lot of contact from Yellowknife with that part of the world. The speech was very moving. It was in English and it brought tears to the mayor's wife, except that I realized only about two people in the crowd understood English enough to hear my very moving story. I repeated my speech in Korean.

I think the question they had was how I ended up in this part of the world and how was I able to get elected to an office when there were no other Koreans in the city.

Anyway, I ran into them again the next day and had dinner with them. They were very anxious to catch the aurora because they only had two days here. They had packed all of their suitcases and they were going to stay out every single second until they got on the plane so they could catch the aurora.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to report that I have heard from them and they did indeed catch the aurora. They wrote glorious reports in their national newspaper and on the web, although I cannot read Korean, because my computer is not able to do it.