The Canadian military has confirmed it participated in a May 2023 forum for Five Eyes intelligence partners that was held by the director of the Pentagon's UFO research program.
"Our nation’s militaries routinely exchange information on a number of subjects as part of our long-standing cooperation as partners in defence," a Canadian National Defence spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. "While the details of the meeting remain classified it can be characterized as the sharing of information on the subject of UAP and no further details can be shared at this time."
Following decades of denial and dismissal by U.S. authorities, both the Pentagon and NASA are currently studying what they call "unidentified anomalous phenomena" or "UAP," terms for what are more commonly called "unidentified flying objects" and "UFOs."
NASA held its first public meeting on UAP last week, nearly a year after into the subject. The 16-member panel included NASA experts and the director of the U.S. Department of Defence's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was to expand previous Pentagon UAP research efforts.
In the , AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick mentioned that he recently held the "first Five Eyes forum on this subject," which included NASA participation. Created during World War II, the Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.
"We’ve entered into discussions with our partners on data sharing: How do they do reporting? What kind of analysis can they help us with? What kind of calibration can they help us with? What can we help them with?" Kirkpatrick, a physicist and intelligence officer, . "We’re establishing all of that right now. And they’re going to end up, you know, sending their information and data to us to feed into the process that we’ve laid out for how we’re going to do all this."
In an email to CTVNews.ca sent late Monday afternoon, a Canadian defence spokesperson described the event as an "informal" forum for Five Eyes allies, which included a presentation from Kirkpatrick.
While it is unclear which parts of the Canadian military participated in the May forum, a previous Feb. 2022 meeting with Pentagon UAP officials included members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. Former Canadian defence minister Harjit Sajjan also received a UAP briefing from his staff in May 2021, according to an earlier CTVNews.ca investigation.
The Canadian military routinely states that it does "not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue." At least four cases appear to have met that criteria between 2016 and Feb. 2023, when a suspected Chinese spy balloon and three other objects were shot down over or near North America.
During the May 31 NASA meeting, Kirkpatrick from the Pentagon's UAP office said nearly half of the over 800 reports his team has collected have been of "spherical" and "metallic" orbs. As an example, Kirkpatrick showed a of a round object observed by an American military drone flying over an undisclosed location in the Middle East.
"We see these all over the world and we see these making very interesting apparent maneuvers," Kirkpatrick said of the so-called orbs, which he previously disclosed in an April U.S. Senate meeting. "Being able to come to some conclusion is going to take time until we can get better resolved data on similar objects that we can then do a larger analysis on."
While most UAP sightings ultimately have ordinary explanations like drones, balloons and atmospheric phenomena, Kirkpatrick estimated that two to five per cent of the 50 to 100-or-so reports his team receives every month are "possibly really anomalous."
"While a large number of cases in AARO's holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with those cases," Kirkpatrick explained. "Meanwhile, for the few objects that do demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO is approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytic rigor."
The acronym UAP previously stood for "unidentified aerial phenomena." U.S. officials recently swapped the word "aerial" for "anomalous" to encompass unidentified objects potentially travelling in water and space.
As in previous U.S. hearings and , officials were clear that they have yet to find firm evidence that links UAP with otherworldly life.
"There is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP," Nadia Drake, a geneticist and science journalist who is part of NASA's UAP study team, said. "Collecting more good data for the scientific community to review in a peer-reviewed context will be important for progress to be made here."
NASA's Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team plans to release a final report this summer, which will focus on improving the collection and analysis of unclassified UAP data.
"Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified anomalous phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies," a NASA official . "Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable."
Officials with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) said they have no plans to follow their U.S. counterparts at NASA and study UAP.
"The CSA is in no way involved in identifying unidentified aerial phenomena," a CSA spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca. "The study of UAPs does not fall within the CSA's mandate and there are currently no plans to explore the topic in the future."
In Canada, a federal aviation incident database shows that , , , and pilots on , , and flights operated by , , , and have been spotting unusual objects and lights over Canada for decades, including a Jan. 29 flight that reported "two lights dancing around… in a circular pattern" near Yellowknife, N.W.T.
Transport Canada, the country's federal transportation department, does not typically follow-up on such reports and cautions that they "contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change."
In March, CTVNews.ca revealed the office of the Canadian government's top scientist had launched a new UAP study designed to understand "how Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reports from the public are managed in Canada and to recommend improvements."
Known as the "Sky Canada Project," an official webpage describing the initiative from the Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada , confirming CTVNews.ca's earlier reporting. The first known Canadian UAP study in nearly 30 years, the Sky Canada Project plans to release a public report in 2024.
With files from CNN and The Associated Press
Do you have an unusual document or observation to share? Email CTVNews.ca Writer Daniel Otis at daniel.otis@bellmedia.ca.
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