Sky Canada Project report (PDF)

REPORT OF THE SKY CANADA PROJECT# 31
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and
Provincial and Local Police Forces
Most municipalities and provinces in Canada do not have their
own police services, they rely on the Royal Canadian Mount-
ed Police (RCMP). The RCMP serves approximately 73% of
Canada’s landmass and holds a federal investigative mandate
across the entire country. Consequently, the RCMP receives re-
ports of UAPs from the public throughout Canada. However, the
RCMP generally does not investigate UAP sightings, as its oper-
ational focus is on public safety and criminal investigations.
Currently, the RCMP does not have a formal policy for the
collection or dissemination of UAP reports. As a result, there is
no classification system specific to UAPs. Such reports are typi-
cally categorized as non-offence (non-criminal) incidents under
the Aeronautics Act—Other Activities. This classification also
encompasses a variety of other vessel sightings within Canadi-
an airspace, such as drones.
When members of the public contact the RCMP, the nature of
the call is assessed and classified before any investigation is
undertaken. However, there is no specific guidance for RCMP
call takers or members regarding UAP reports. The calls can be
categorized as “suspicious vehicle,” for example, and lost in a
large number of non-UAP reports. It was therefore impossible
for the RCMP to provide statistics about UAP reports.
Historically, the RCMP has conducted some investigations into
“unidentified flying objects,” and many of these records have
been declassified and are publicly available through Library
and Archives Canada.
During consultations with the OCSA, the RCMP acknowledged
the growing public interest in UAPs and the proliferation of mis-
information and disinformation on the subject. They noted the
potential value of a dedicated office responsible for providing
factual information and serving as a centralized body to which
UAP reports could be referred. This would allow the RCMP to stay
focused on criminal investigations and threats to public safety.
Additionally, the RCMP coordinates with provincial and mu-
nicipal police departments as needed. The primary mission of
these local and provincial police services is to ensure public
safety, and they typically approach UAP-related calls from this
perspective. RCMP consultations with these organizations
revealed that they lack standardized systems for collecting and
organizing UAP reports, as well as formal policies regarding
such incidents. Like the RCMP, these local and provincial police
departments recognized the potential benefits of a centralized
body to which local UAP sightings could be directed.
Department of National Defence (DND)
The Sky Canada Project focuses primarily on the civilian aspects
of UAP sightings in Canada, excluding military sightings and pro-
cesses. Nonetheless, meetings were held with representatives of
the Department of National Defence, North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD), the Canadian Armed Forces, and
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) to discuss
the goals of the Sky Canada Project and receive any information
they wanted to share.
DRDC, the scientific research arm of DND, has informed the
OCSA that it has no formal program on UAPs and no capacity or
mandate to collect, receive or analyze citizens’ reports on UAPs.
The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) does not typically investi-
gate sightings of unexplained phenomena outside the context of
investigating potential threats or distress. The RCAF collaborates
with U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada
to enforce safety and security regulations.
Media reported that the RCAF represented the Canadian Armed
Forces at a May 2023 Five Eyes briefing on UAPs. The informal
meeting was hosted by the United States at the Pentagon, where
a presentation on UAPs was made by the U.S. All-domain Anom-
aly Resolution Office (AARO). While the details of the meeting
remain classified, it was characterized as boosting cooperation
on reporting and analyzing unexplained sightings. The OCSA was
not able to access first-hand information about this meeting.
National Research Council of Canada (NRC)
As mentioned earlier, from 1967 to 1995, the NRC was the main
federal government organization responsible for receiving UAP
sighting reports in Canada. Within NRC, they were collated
by the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics and kept under the
responsibility of Dr. Peter Millman, in his “non-meteoritic sight-
ings” case reports—a term referring to cases unrelated to me-
teors. The files gathered by the NRC were transferred to Library
and Archives Canada (LAC) in 1995, where they are accessible
to the public.
The NRC continues to receive occasional requests for infor-
mation on archived UAP-related documents. According to
their records, they processed about 40 inquiries (e.g., sight-
ings, questions, media requests) related to UAPs over the last
decade. These inquiries were referred to other government
departments, such as Transport Canada and LAC, as well as
local astronomy clubs such as centres of the Royal Astronomi-
cal Society of Canada.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
The LAC’s collection of government records on UAPs includes
files from 1947 to 1995 primarily received from four federal
organizations:
• the Department of National Defence;
• the Department of Transport;
• the National Research Council of Canada; and
• the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
LAC’s records include correspondence, reports, memos and
procedural forms. Some focus on specific UFO sightings, while
others address general reporting processes or policies for
documenting phenomena. The files served multiple purposes,
such as explaining unusual aerial observations, investigating
some sightings or responding to public inquiries.
The entire LAC collection (over 15,000 pages) is publicly acces-
sible. Users can locate these documents through LAC’s online
search tools by using keywords like “UFO” or “non-meteoritic”
and filing a request to LAC. A subset of the digitized records
(around 9,500 pages) are directly available online through LAC’s
digital archives on the Canadian Heritage website. To highlight
this collection, in 2005, LAC organized an online exhibition enti-
tled “Canada’s UFOs: The Search for the Unknown”.28
Many researchers and authors have mined LAC’s UFO docu-
ment collection to write books on various related subjects,
including, most recently, Matthew Hayes for Search for the
Unknown: Canada’s UFO Files and the Rise of Conspiracy
Theory (2022), and Chris Rutkowski for Canada’s UFOs:
Declassified (2022). These works highlight the rich resources
available in LAC’s UAP-related records and their value for
understanding the governmental and societal responses that
these phenomena inspired.
Drones appear more
frequently in the sky.
At dusk, their small
bodies blend into the
fading light, making them
surprisingly difficult
to identify.