For sure. We've had this conversation around the infrastructure that's currently in the Rainy Lake-Lake of the Woods system.
A lot of that has been around for decades now. There are natural choke points along the way, and that's where you can't get enough water through the Rainy River in this situation to bring down Rainy Lake and Namakan Lake, and you experience that high-water level. Similarly, for water going out the Winnipeg River to bring down the Lake of the Woods, which is the big storage reservoir, and then Lac Seul, you can't get enough water out fast enough to then alleviate that pressure. You'll actually see gravesites being eroded in Lac Seul. There are physical bones showing in shorelines.
That being said, that's why we're sitting here now again. It's to start to redo or manipulate those choke points, but is doing more manipulation to Mother Earth really the right answer? The conversation at grand council is about how we can do a better job of getting more information so that our predictions are actually more accurate.
My point of concern is that the rule curves in the Rainy-Namakan system actually went 0 for 2 in the last two years in terms of predicting either that drought or that flood, and we're supposed to be the experts. Those models and those engineers are supposed to be the experts. However, we're just human and we need as much information as possible.
That's where we get into starting to look at this as treaty partners. It's a problem for everyone, and we need to start bringing a more holistic approach to how we talk about water regulations, because it's not going to be just widening dams and choke points that's going to get us out of this; it's managing our relationship to that water and bringing in more knowledge and harmonizing those governance systems to really do a better job.