We had some LiDAR surveying done around the Red River prior to the construction of the expanded Red River floodway. That was felt to be necessary to design it properly. And there's been some other LiDAR work.
Last year, starting about May 7, I was on an emergency flood conference call every day at noon for about eight weeks with the Minister of Agriculture, the deputy minister, and many staff members. We were talking about opening the breach in the dikes along the Assiniboine River at Portage la Prairie. It became really obvious to me that they didn't know where the water was going to go. We had to have municipal stakeholders and provincial staff who were experts on the subject, and they were saying there's this creek here, there's that drain there, it might go this way, it might go that way. They were anticipating it could flood up to 152,000 acres of land in a worst-case scenario. As it turned out, it didn't get to be that extreme, thank goodness, but it simply goes to show you how important it would be to get this LiDAR work done.
I think that would be a good recommendation for your committee to consider, having LiDAR mapping data. It would be a fairly costly undertaking, but I think it would be a treasure for future planning for scientists and governments.