  The first part of this article is a review of the properties expected of any
local Langlands correspondence that aims to be considered "canonical," and of
known results that establish some or all of these properties for specific
groups. In the absence of compatibility with a global correspondence it is not
known in general that this list of desirable properties suffices to
characterize the correspondence. The remainder of the article outlines elements
of a strategy to prove that the $L$-packets attached to irreducible local
parameters are finite and non-empty, in particular, for the specific
parametrization constructed by Genestier and Lafforgue when $F$ is of positive
characteristic.
