Media coverage of the Canadian government’s interest in UFOs

Has been
of the Canadian media about U̳F̳O̳s in recent years.
the Canadian media in recent years, largely because of the
comments from some Canadian politicians on the subject. Also,
In addition, the recent results of ITA applications (the Canadian equivalent of the
of the American FOIA) of government records regarding U̳F̳O̳s have produced
some very curious documents.

The
The most significant of these media stories were written by a
journalist in particular, Daniel Otis, who began his series of
articles in the online news source Vice and has continued his work
now as a reporter for CTV News, a major Canadian media outlet
from Canada.

Otis
sold a handful of stories to Vice starting in 2014 about various things
stuff, but then in 2021 he started a series of great news stories
about the Canadian government\’s interest in U̳F̳O̳s.

Their
first for Vice described how “the Canadian military is being
when pilots spot U̳F̳O̳s in Canadian airspace,” citing CIRVIS
(Communication Instructions for R̳e̳p̳o̳r̳t̳i̳n̳g̳ Sightings of Vital Intelligence
of Vital Intelligence) archived by the Department of National Defense of
National Defense of Canada and obtained by Otis through ATI requests.

That article of
That article seemed to get the ball rolling, and Otis\’ moment was
spotless, as American interest in the PAU skyrocketed in 2021 with the
with the activity of the PAU Working Group, the AATIP and other programs.
programs.

Otis
interviewed me for his first Vice story because he knew I was
involved in the study of Canadian U̳F̳O̳ reports and government documents.
He also recognized me in his later stories, and it was good to get
recognition for my work. As many know, I have been including
Canadian government documents on U̳F̳O̳ sightings over the past 32
years of production of the Canadian U̳F̳O̳ Survey (and also much, much earlier).
before). Although I have not made much of this, the articles by Otis
are among the first to point out my extensive involvement in U̳F̳O̳ research
using official Canadian documents.

Otis has done a remarkable job of unearthing official Canadian documents
about U̳F̳O̳s, including cases
cases where pilots reported U̳F̳O̳s and a
video taken by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer of a U̳F̳O̳
about a Canadian city.

The went on to produce some very interesting stories for Vice, and then
in September 2021,
he had an article published that focused on my work. He had submitted a
FoEI and found that: “The Canadian government and military have
sent U̳F̳O̳ reports to a civilian researcher for more than two decades,”
noting that I was “Canada\’s \’point man\’.”

Otis
obtained copies of the PowerPoint slides that accompanied a briefing to
Canada\’s Defense Minister in May 2021. The briefing described
the history and current status of the official interest of the Canadian government
official Canadian government interest in U̳F̳O̳s, and included a note on how it had been conducting
civilian investigation of U̳F̳O̳s for decades. A later document showed that
my photograph was included in a slide.

What had not revealed to anyone is that the DND asked me in May 2021
the information they used to inform the Minister.

Needless to say
say this caused a bit of a stir. I didn\’t know that I personally
was going to be included in the briefing, but I figured my information would be
useful for reporting to the Defense Minister. I didn\’t know when the
briefing was going to take place.

(Curiously,
Otis\’s persistence in following the story found that in 2022, another
briefing there was
happened,
is
this time for him
current Minister of Transport.
And sure enough, the same basic information was presented, including
a reference to me).

Otis
had been a
CTV writer from 2016 to 2019
and then again
in 2021 as
journalist for CTV News. He has
done some
stories for them about U̳F̳O̳s, all centered around government involvement
and the interest of politicians in the subject. In fact, Otis
broke the news that Member of Parliament Larry Maguire made public
with his interest in U̳F̳O̳s and their
questions in a Parliamentary Committee on U̳F̳O̳s about the sites
on Canadian nuclear sites.

Maguire
publicly stated that on January 28, 2021 he had been informed by
Robert Powell and others from SCU and then, on February 16, 2021, by
Lue Elizondo and his associates. Then on October 20, 2021, Powell and
Christopher Mellon met with another member of the Canadian Parliament
Parliament. Curiously, without any knowledge of these meetings
with other people, and completely apart from the fact that I was signed up for a briefing
to the Minister of Defence, in June 2021 he asked me for the Maguire office
to discuss the Canadian government\’s involvement in U̳F̳O̳s. I met with
Maguire on June 3, 2021, although this was not mentioned in the media.

Since
since then a few more Canadian politicians have spoken publicly about U̳F̳O̳s
and U̳F̳O̳s, and Otis tracks them down.

Y
more recently Maguire
kindly provided a statement for publication during the launch of my
most recent book, Canada\’s
U̳F̳O̳s: Declassified.

Definitely
more to come!

Good
work Daniel!