Often, UFO fans ask, “What does the government really know about UFOs?” or “Is there a cover-up?” My work over five decades has given me insight into how these and other questions can be answered. Since I began investigating sightings of unidentified flying objects in the mid-1970s, I have found myself immersed in the UFO subculture. Skeptics and debunkers have criticized me for being too much of a believer, and hard-core believers have accused me of being a debunker. The reality is that I am trying to be truly objective, listening to witnesses and assessing evidence rather than rejecting it outright but also calling a spade a spade when an observed UFO is clearly explainable as a star, planet, or airplane.
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I’ve always liked a good story, but in ufology, stories are often accepted as fact without critical analysis. Many claims are made on UFO podcasts and tabloid TV by “insiders” who seem to know many secrets that can’t be shared because—well, they’re secret. (“I wish I could tell you where the intact alien craft is hidden, but . . .”) Even so-called whistleblowers can’t offer any proof of their claims—although their stories are certainly entertaining.
My academic background is in astronomy education, so I could certainly talk about the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation with some authority, but I won’t. There’s no incontrovertible proof that aliens are visiting Earth, but there’s a lot of proof that the Canadian government has been taking the subject of UFOs very seriously for many years. Furthermore, the Canadian government has long been doing all the things that private organizations and governments in other countries are getting kudos for doing today, like scientific studies and monitoring the sky for anomalous objects.
I know this because I have been asked by official agencies, police, politicians, and scientists to help understand what UFOs really are, and what to do about them. Few have known my true involvement until now.
December 16, 2017, was the day ufology was thrust, kicking and screaming, into the public spotlight. That day, a feature in the New York Times by journalists Ralph Blumenthal, Helene Cooper, and Leslie Kean revealed that the United States government had funded and operated a program that looked seriously into reports of UFOs observed by military personnel.
The story came out because someone described as a whistleblower, Luis Elizondo, said that he was in charge of an office called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program from 2007 to 2012. What the Times story neglected to mention was that the program was originally called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program. Given a budget of $22 million (US), it was created by US Senate majority leader Harry Reid to study UFOs over five years.
Following that revelation, mainstream media interviewed UFO proponents and politicians, who all had “inside information” on what the American government really knew about UFOs. The next few years were essentially a media-feeding frenzy, fuelled and encouraged by UFO experts who all claimed to have insight into what was going on but couldn’t offer definitive proof of their claims because of non-disclosure agreements and—well, it was all very secret.
In 2020, during a US Senate hearing, it was discovered that there was a follow-up program along the same lines, called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). Its activities had included classified briefings to committees in Congress about UFOs and associated issues, including the claim that the government had in its possession intact extraterrestrial craft or fragments thereof.
While previously viewed as a taboo subject for politicians to discuss publicly, the favourable response from the media and the public about the American situation seemed to grant permission for Canadian politicians to weigh in on the matter.
On March 2, 2022, Larry Maguire, who was, at the time, the Progressive Conservative member of Parliament for Brandon–Souris in Manitoba and vice chair of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, raised concerns about UFOs flying over Canadian nuclear sites. He asked the minister of natural resources, John Hannaford, if he had received reports of UFOs over nuclear research or storage sites. (He had not.)
A few months later, after kicking the hornet’s nest with his questions to Hannaford, on May 12, 2022, Maguire published a statement about his view that Canadian citizens should know more about what their government was doing about UFOs.
He wrote, “With the news that Canada’s Minister of Defence was briefed about the issue of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), it’s time for parliamentarians and the government of Canada to take this issue seriously.” Maguire was referring to a May 6, 2022, CTV story by Daniel Otis, who had discovered that the minister of national defence, Harjit Sajjan, had been briefed about UFOs a year earlier, on May 27, 2021.
The CTV story went on to say, “A lieutenant-colonel co-ordinated the effort. An accompanying five-page slide presentation included an overview of cases and procedures, which currently link the Canadian Armed Forces with air traffic controllers, federal aviation authorities and a civilian researcher in Manitoba.”
The “civilian researcher” was me. In fact, I was specifically named in the slide presentation, which included my photograph.
