Yes. Those irrigation projects are essentially completing the plan for Lake Diefenbaker, which was a reservoir built for irrigation in the 1960s. Very little of that irrigated water use was taken up at the time. It's the largest water reservoir in the Prairies and has tremendous capacity to support irrigation.
That said, it was designed in a time when we had a mid-20th-century climate and water regime. This year, that reservoir received only 28% of its normal inflows. I think that going forward, we have to realize that there will be times of great stress, with water supply issues across the province. When it was designed and built, there was no consideration of the downstream indigenous communities in the Saskatchewan River delta, the largest freshwater delta in North America. It has more or less dried out in the last few years. The muskrat have been wiped out.
For water management of that irrigation system, we need to look at things that are broader than just irrigation. Yes, we can do that, but there is also hydroelectricity, as well as water for communities, mines and other developments, as well as the ecosystem and the downstream indigenous communities, all while making sure there's enough left over for Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba Hydro. These are difficult things, but with appropriate prediction systems and multi-use operation of these reservoir systems, I think we can do it. We can reduce some of the impacts of climate variability and extreme droughts and floods on the water systems in the central Prairies.