The Canadian Forces do not have any plans for additional meetings with allies at this point and will not be working with the federal government's science advisor on the phenomena, National Defence confirmed to this newspaper.
Last year, a U.S. defence scientist revealed that allied militaries had met at the Pentagon to discuss sharing data on what is officially referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP.
At the time, National Defence confirmed that a Royal Canadian Air Force officer attended the meeting in May 2023.
Department spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Poulin said what was discussed at the gathering remains secret. She noted the discussions centered around sharing information on the subject of UAPs.
But Poulin said while the Canadian Forces continue to share various types of information with its allies, unidentified flying objects are not on the agenda for now. "At this time, we are not aware of a planned meeting on UAPs," she added.
Poulin also revealed that the military had introductory meetings with the Sky Canada Project, which was created in the fall of 2022 by the federal government. That project is to study how UAP reports from the public are managed in Canada and to recommend improvements. It is being led by the Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada.
But Poulin said beyond the introductory meeting, neither National Defence nor the Canadian Forces are working with or involved in the Sky Canada Project.
Last year, American scientist Sean Kirkpatrick, who was then leading an office in the U.S. military that examined UFO-related activities, revealed that allies had met on the subject. He said the meeting involved the Five Eyes - an intelligence alliance of the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
But Kirkpatrick's announcement sparked a flurry of inquiries at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa as the military tried to figure out who had attended the meeting, according to newly released documents.
A Canadian Forces Intelligence Command officer confirmed his organization had not attended. "We further confirmed with DRDC that they did not attend either," noted the officer in an email sent June 6, 2023. DRDC refers to Defence Research and Development Canada, the department's science branch.
The names of those sending the emails were censored from the records for reasons of national security. The documents were released under the Access to Information law.
Another officer, assigned to scientific and technical intelligence in the military, suggested someone from the joint U.S.-Canadian organization, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, might have been at the meeting. "I would recommend asking our staff at NORAD if they have been engaged on this since they are the most likely first point of contact," suggested the officer, whose name is censored from the records for security reasons.
The officers don't appear to have been successful in determining who, exactly, attended the Pentagon meeting.
The UFO debate has been rekindled over the last several years after the release of a series of videos shot by U.S. military pilots of unidentified flying objects.
In July 2023, former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, Maj. David Grusch, testified at a Congressional hearing that the Pentagon had been involved in a decades-long coverup about UFOs. Grusch said the U.S. defence department had tried to retrieve and reverse engineer an alien spacecraft.
The Pentagon denied the claims.
Kirkpatrick, who left his Pentagon job in December 2023, has warned military leaders that the U.S. defence department wasn't telling the public enough about UFOs.
Kirkpatrick was concerned that conspiracy theorists would take advantage of the lack of information in the public sphere to promote their agendas, the US publication Politico reported in February 2024.
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