New UAP footage and questions about government accountability | Backscroll

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Full auto-transcript: Good day and welcome back to Reality Check. So this week we've got a good friend of mine and a good friend of the show, Daniel Otus, who's an investigative journalist based in Toronto, Canada, who contributes to CTV News, one of Canada's equivalents, if you like, of CNN. Daniel's been covering UFOs for many, many years, and he's probably one of Canada's foremost journalists investigating the subject. And the reason I want to pull him in today is because of the so-called Sky Canada report. Back in 2022, I think Canada announced to everyone's surprise that it was going to investigate UFOs, UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena. And the report came down in June this year. Dan, I'm really keen to hear from you, sir. Do you think the report said anything substantial? What's significant? Or was it a fizzer? Well, I you know, I think there were some people hoping that the report would look into cases and the larger questions around UAP. It didn't do that. Um, it set out its goals were to look at how UAP reports are collected officially in Canada and to offer recommendations for improvements if if needed. Well, they certainly found uh some recommendations for improvement. And basically what this report is saying is that you know UAP data collection needs to be standardized in Canada and that there should be a federal body tasked with investigating these sorts of cases. Um right now there's a sort of patchwork of procedures uh that captures UFO reports uh through transportation officials, military, air force, what have you. But, you know, generally speaking, unless there's a clear national security, defense, or safety nexus, there tends to be no follow-up. What the Sky Canada project is saying is that, you know, reports of this nature are worthy of further scientific study and that the only way we're going to be able to find answers and get explanations is if we have better data sets, which could happen through, you know, the standardization of reporting mechanisms and proper scientific analysis. >> Now, this is very significant. This is the chief science advisor of Canada for the Canadian government acknowledging that unidentified anomalous phenomena needs to be investigated and data collected on it. That in and of itself is very significant, isn't it? >> Well, I'd say so. Uh the chief science adviser of Canada is, you know, reports directly to the prime minister and and to the cabinet. It's an armslength advisory office that you know takes on projects on its own initiative. I mean in the past it's looked at co 19. It's looked at aquaculture. It's looked at questions of open science and you know I guess seeing the news that was coming out of the United States members of this office uh their their interest was uh certainly developed out of that and they decided to they decided to dive headlong into it. Were you were you consulted? Were you were you one of the people that was consulted as part of their investigations? >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh the final report that was released this summer included a paragraph on my contributions to the field. Uh my journalistic work on this has unveiled procedural material cases uh shown how you know UAP reports continue to come in from particularly credible observers like pilots and police officers and how you know there are documents that I've been able to you know pull through the freedom of information system showing you know how these things are cataloged. Uh I I was consulted um my work was cited in the report. I've spoken to members of of the team at the uh Sky Canada project and yeah and they also spoke to other folks. I mean they spoke to Arrow. They spoke to the Gipan UFO group in France. They they spoke to to a lot of folks and put out a pretty interesting report. >> Why have they done this? I mean, it would have been so easy for them to do what, for example, the Australian government continues to do, which is to stick its head in the sand and deny that there's an issue at all. Basically say, "Look, we're not interested in UFOs. We don't recognize there's any need to investigate them. We've got other priorities." Why, at a time when I know your respective governments and time have basically been criticized for spending too much money on follyies, why are they spending money on investigating UAPs? Well, I think they saw the developments happening south of the border, uh, the ongoing Pentagon efforts to look into the UAP issue, NASA, some of the academic endeavors we're seeing out of the United States. And I think it demonstrated to them that you know there clearly is interest here that you know reports of this nature do continue to come in that we don't have explanations and that anything you know sort of unknown or unexplained should be looked at through a scientific lens. I think it's it's very important to note as I did before that this is an armslength scientific advisory office. I mean, had they, you know, not been in arms length office, who knows if they would have been given the liberty to pursue a topic of this nature. But, but they did so rather boldly at a time when, you know, there isn't a lot of political capital in discussing this issue. We talk about putting money into things like this when we have so many other economic problems in our world. But I think it it really demonstrated a lot of courage and forward thinking and willingness to tackle this issue seriously. >> I I agree with you there. Yeah, I mean it is I mean to me it's quite extraordinary that they've decided to recommend the creation if you like of a a a federal body that would be responsible for collecting and investigating UAPs. Has there been any progress from the Canadian government on just how they're going to create such a body and who's going to do it? It >> it's hard to say. Um, the Sky Canada project report specifically singles out the Canadian Space Agency as being, you know, a trusted scientific body that could undertake this effort. Um, and my communications with the Canadian Space Agency, at least their communications team, the way they paint it, they don't really want to get involved with the issue. We did, however, get a pretty um, supportive response from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is our federal police force here in Canada. they expressed willingness uh into supporting this project and cooperating with the Sky Canada project because it's, you know, in most of Canada, the RCMP, the Federal Police are going to be your first point of contact if you want to report something unusual in the sky. They got a lot of reports like this and they would love for there to be a scientific body that could look in them to free them up to do their, you know, policing work. >> So, the police have actually said that to you, have they? The Mounties want some kind of investigative agency. the Mounties have come forward and supporting this issue. And if you look, you know, even in the historical record, the Mounties have been receiving reports of this nature from concerned Canadian citizens for decades, decades upon decades upon decades. So let's just go back a bit because one of the things about Canada that intrigues me is for a while there you had a member of parliament I think his name was Larry Maguire and he raised interesting concerns in a letter that was directed I think to the defense minister of Canada suggesting that there had been historical Canadian military collaboration with the US on UAP crash retrieval. s um they were very broad inquiries that he made to the Canadian defense minister, but essentially a denial came back from the minister's office that the DRDC, the Defense Research and Development Canada organization was doing any current work on UAP. And I have a hunch that that response from the Canadian defense minister was a little evasive that essentially they confined their answer not to a broad denial of any Canadian government scientific investigation and collaboration with the US, but that they constrained their answer back to MP Larry Maguire at the time to the DRDC to this Defense Research and Development Canada organization. Did the Sky Canada inquiry at any stage investigate any of the allegations made by Larry Maguire? And what do you know about these claims that were made by Larry Maguire? He seemed to have inside information. >> Yeah. Well, I guess let's to start um with the Sky Canada project. I mean the report they released does not touch upon this issue. Uh as I stated before you know their real mission was just to look at the current state of procedures and to you know offer improvements. They didn't look at these types of allegations. Although I'm sure members of the team have looked into this issue it fell outside of the scope of their report. I mean, with the right political support and the right political will, the report that we see could perhaps be chapter one in an ongoing effort, but you know, we'll need a little bit of political buyin to make that happen. As for this letter from Mr. Maguire, um I mean, Larry Maguire is a member or was a member of parliament from southern Manitoba and the Canadian prairies. He didn't stand for reelection in the election we have this year. So he's just retired after uh a long career in in public office. Uh he's probably one of the most significant Canadian politicians when it comes to this issue uh in in so far of his advocacy. I mean he was advocating for the Sky Canada projects before it was even officially launched. And yes, in his letter to uh the former defense minister, he asked about, you know, alleged Canadian nexus and crash retrievals and reverse engineering in that matter. Uh the response that came from the Department of Defense, yeah, was evasive. Uh as far as I'm aware, you know, Maguire was basing his questions off material that was presented to them by a source. As for corroborating evidence, you know, it's certainly been a hole I I've tried diving into, but it's um it's non-stop dead ends. You know, the day I have a a document in hand or a witness willing to go on the record about, you know, Canadian Nexus and these sorts of allegations, I will certainly run with the story. But, you know, it's been it's been a couple years of hard digging without without finding that conclusive answer. So, as I understand it, there were meetings between Larry Maguire's office and a whistleblower source from inside the scientific establishment in the Canadian military. Was that the allegation you heard? >> That's my understanding. Uh I I I don't think Mr. Maguire pulled these allegations out of thin air. Um, the way it was presented to me by by his office is that they were speaking to an individual that they deemed credible who is making allegations of this nature about Canada's historical involvement uh perhaps during the Cold War era. Uh, but again, this person hasn't uh wanted to come forward in a a public way as far as I know. Uh, and if they're out there listening, you know, they should give you or me a call and and come on the show because I'd love to hear from them. >> I mean, I I've heard a whole lot of rumors and it's speculation only. I mean, I've heard from people in the program, so-called, which is essentially the secret covert US program that everybody denies exists, which is essentially retrieving and attempting to reverse engineer technology. And there is one source and I would never uh use that source because I have to protect them but they've told me that there has been and the word is has been collaboration between Canadian military scientists and American scientists on certain technology. It was even suggested to me that there might be technology which is located in Canada. Have you heard similar allegations? >> I I I've certainly heard things of a similar nature. Um, you know, I I pull every thread that presents itself to me, but I I I have nothing conclusive to say on that one. You know, I I hope I I can come back and tell you more about that. >> I just for our audience to understand, Daniel and I are both journalists who are trained to read press releases backwards. We're trained to read between the lines. And in the answer that came from the uh former Canadian defense minister when she was the Canadian defense minister to the question posed by Larry Maguire, it was very interesting that Larry had phrased his question specifically about defense department involvement with the American military on crash tech, i.e. UAP technology, nonhuman technology. And what's interesting was that the minister confined her answer very specifically to this DRDC organization. And I think that was perhaps a fault with Larry that he was a bit too sure of himself and he focused his inquiry on the DRDC specifically which gave the minister an opportunity to specifically deny DRDC involvement. It raises the possibility I I think likelihood that there have historically been Canadian scientists that are perhaps not part of that so-called DRDC who have and were involved in collaboration with US scientists on alleged retrieved non-human technology. Well, the the DRDC, you know, as it exists now, would be if there was any sort of scientific analysis happening within the Canadian military, that would be the obvious place where you would find that kind of work happening. Um, I interesting you say that's former defense minister Anita Nand, who now is our um our foreign minister, so who's dealing directly with uh the the Trump administration as well as other governments. Uh, so this is a very prominent individual. I I I really wish I had more to I could share or tell you on this, but for me it's been, you know, I guess it's very similar to what you're hearing, but it it's been uh difficult to find any kind of corroborating evidence on this one. It's it's not something I've given up on, though. Um, >> no, absolutely. I'm I'm with you. I want to get to the bottom of it. The other thing I wanted to to ask you about, Daniel, was there was a memo. I'm not sure if it was you that obtained it, but there was an FOI memo that was provided to the prime minister at the time, Mr. Trudeau, which briefed that quote, "Full exploitation of the Alaska object was still ongoing." And uh a later statement from the Canadian military clarified that the memo was stating that the object had not been yet been found, which is not actually what the memo says. They referred to it as object number 23. Object 23's function, method of propulsion, or affiliation to any nation state remains unverified. It is unknown whether it poses an armed threat or has intelligence collection capabilities. The full exploitation of UAP 20, which was engaged by the US on February the 10th, 2023, has not yet been completed. And just to make things clear, UAP23 is the one that was um tracked over Yukon entering Canadian airspace. And this is some of the I think four mystery objects that flew across the United States. Only one of which has formally been confirmed is an alleged Chinese government balloon. One of these objects of course fell in the Yukon. I thought it was interesting that memo. What's your takeaway from that memo? Do do we assume that there's something to this? What did they mean about full exploitation of the Alaska object? Did you ever get to the bottom of that? Oh, it's hard to say. If you look at the date of the memo, uh this was that that was a story that I broke for CTV News uh revealing this memo. If I recall correctly, I think it was provided by a reader who was doing their own uh freedom of information work if I recall correctly. Um, as as for the full exploitation, yeah, it certainly the word full exploitation implies that, you know, they're actively in the midst of exploiting or analyzing something. Uh, what what strikes me about these cases, you know, we had the object that was shot down Alaska, uh, Canada's Yukon Territory, which borders Alaska, and then one over Lake Hiron in the Great Lakes. Nothing, no information came out. We heard a lot about you know this uh this Chinese spy balloon you know which we had clear as day photos but in terms of the other objects we were we were given nothing. Uh my my work has found some more details. For example uh the work I did found images that were taken of the Yukon object. Uh emails about those images revealed that they were stills from video. I tried to obtain that video and was denied, but we at least got the images. Other Freedom of Information work has revealed that the RCMP, the Mounties, recovered debris from the shores of Lake Hiron. Uh that information was never made public for whatever reason. As for the Alaska object, it's even less less as has come through. And um you know the the debris that was collected from Lake Hiron according to the internal analysis and the documents I was able to find made it pretty clear that it was perhaps some sort of smaller weather balloon type device. Okay. But why all the secrecy? And and if our militaries and governments are willing to be so intensely secret about something that has a pretty ordinary explanation, I mean, what are what are they willing to uh lie and mislead about? Um >> well cuz the reason I I really wanted you to make that point is because the findings in this quite I think excellent report from Sky Canada are that in order to avoid conspiracy theories in order to diffuse public speculation that there's something sinister going on with these objects it's very important to be transparent. And what shocks me is that we are now what two three years on now from those February 2023 overflights that became a massive media issue in not only Canada but the United States and the rest of the world. It was a huge concern that there had been these overflights of the continental United States, North America. And we still don't have answers to that mystery. Isn't that in and of itself a spit in the eye to the claims that are made in the Sky Canada report about the importance of transparency and accountability? >> Well, that's that's exactly it. I mean, the lack of transparency certainly has fueled all kinds of theories about these objects, you know, and if my reporting sheds light on perhaps, you know, how ordinary at least, you know, we one of these things was, why why all the secrecy? Is it a case of, you know, they're embarrassed for overreacting? Possible. Is it a case of them wanting to cover something up? Yes, also possible. It's it's frustrating, you know. I I find it not only as a journalist, but as a a citizen of Canada that we had these incidents that dominated headlines and generated a great deal of public curiosity and you know, our governments and military officials don't have the fundamental respect to for the populace to provide them with the answers that they do have when they do have them. It's interesting because in the Sky Canada report they actually specifically address I noticed the overflying four objects and they acknowledge um that that one of them was of course shot down over the US territorial waters off the coast of South Carolina and it was identified as originating from a foreign country and carried sophisticated equipment. I think that's the Canadians not wanting to offend China. But it also acknowledged that one week later on February the 11th, 2023, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, ordered the downing of a smaller balloon over Yukon Territory, Canadian territory. Two other small high alitude balloons, it says, was shot down over US airspace. One in northern Alaska February the 10th and the second over Lake Hiron on February the 12th. And apparently there was a brief statement by an RCMP, a Mounty spokesperson to CTV News. The recovered debris from the shores of Lake Huron were deemed not to be of national security concern. If it really is the case that these were, as they say, high alitude balloons, small high alitude balloons, why the secrecy? As I said, I mean, embarrassment for using a very expensive missile to down something, you know, that cost a few hundred bucks perhaps. The desire to cover up something. The It's the secrecy to me seems unnecessary. I mean, I I'm a proponent for radical transparency from our governments. Um, you know, that's part of what drew me as a journalist into looking at the UFO UAP issue. I mean, I I write about all kinds of things. I do investigations on other subjects, too. Uh, but this one, it it was just so striking to me that we have this history of governments essentially not respecting the public's ability to digest this kind of information. Um, decades of obiscation, you know, decades of denials. Um, so to me, this sort of seemed like a continuation of that. you know, now the Sky Canada project is coming out and saying we need to end this kind of secrecy uh in order to regain public trust. And when it comes specifically the UFO issue shows you uh how how public trust can be and governments can be eroded. Um you know, it's it's clear as day that folks are seeing things they can't explain. uh yet it's only just in the past few years after decades that we're we're finally getting you know some degree of support from governments publicly saying that you know this is a real issue worth looking into. Now just returning for a moment to the speculation that was made by Larry Maguire MP when he was an MP to the Canadian defense minister that there might be Canadian scientists who had historically involved themselves in collaborating with the US on retrieved nonhuman alien technology. Incredible allegation. What's fascinating to me is that there is an on thereord public history in Canada involving a gentleman called Wilbert Smith who was um an engineer with the Department of Transport in Canada in the 1950s and he asked for permission to do part-time research to investigate whether some UFOs could use the power of Earth's magnetic field as a source of propulsion. They talk about Project Magnet in the Sky Canada report and how Smith essentially um expanded its investigative scope to include investigations into the validity of UFO observations. What's interesting is they they represent that Smith's work was private work and yet it's quite clear from what Wilbert Smith said during his lifetime that he was liazing very closely with very senior people in what seems to have been some kind of precursor of what we now know of as the the legacy UAP crash retrieval reverse engineering program. He said he was briefed about the secret UAP program by people, scientists in the United States, that the contacts that he made were facilitated by, I think, the Canadian consulate or the Can Canadian embassy in Washington DC, and that he was told that this was a secret that was higher even than the hydrogen bomb. Uh, what do you know about the Wilbert Smith story? Was he just an eccentric Canadian engineer who did these investigations on his own bat? Or do you think that there was some kind of collaboration going on between Wilbert Smith and scientists or officials in the US military? >> I think probably a little bit of both um is my sense of it. He he started looking into this in an official capacity and once the powers that be got a whiff of what he was up to, uh his official investigations were ended, but that didn't stop him from continuing to dig. >> And good on him for doing so. >> Absolutely. I mean, like it appears he did make contacts, you know, with in the United States. Um it, you know, I I'll I'll be frank with you. I'll be honest. My my research has mostly focused on contemporary cases and procedures. Um I work as a journalist and if you find documents from, you know, 70 years ago, uh most new editor news editors aren't going to get excited about that. You know, they want to see the Royal Canadian Air Force procedures that are on the books today in 2025. Um, so I I I'm not I'm not an expert on on Wilbert Smith, but it it is as we as far as we can tell the earliest official Canadian investigatory effort into the issue. You know, he took it very seriously. Uh he claims to have been told information that uh you know is echoed in that letter Larry Maguire uh wrote to the former defense minister. Um there there's to me it seems there's threads to pull there and there's still threads to pull there. Um the Wilbert Smith papers uh create a lot of questions that we we still don't have conclusive answers for. >> Let's talk about some of those contemporary cases that you're aware of. One of the um people I I think we should probably tip our hat to on the way through here is um is it Chris Rutoski? Chris Rutowski. He um he's ran run a civilian organization for many years inside Canada which essentially had been I think even the referring point by police and other government agencies. You actually had an extraordinary situation where a private UFO data gathering organization led by Mr. Rkowski was essentially gathering all of the data on UAPs in that part of North America. um what what what do you know about some of the more recent contemporary UAP reports and have they played any part in prompting the the Canadian government to start taking this issue more seriously? >> Yeah. Well, just to backtrack a little bit about uh Chris Rowski, he's a researcher out of uh Winnipeg, uh Manitoba, and he he's done some interesting work. his uh group has been collecting and collating uh Canadian reports for decades and for a period of almost 20 years he was receiving some reports directly from Canadian uh transportation and military officials which he was using in his you know survey that he publishes every year. Um in terms of contemporary reports, my research shows that you know in very very recent years we have uh pilots on airlines like United, American Airlines, uh Air Canada, WestJet, Air France, KLM. I could I could go on and on. Uh reporting unusual lights and objects over Canadian skies. Uh my research has uncovered air traffic control audio where you can hear pilots describing these kinds of lights in real time and their you know sense of awe and wonder. Um I think there's specifically there's a few specific cases. You know when you ask the Canadian government what do we do about what do you do about UFO reports? The line you get back generally says uh we do not you know investigate or follow up unless there is a safety uh you know or security issue and there have been cases where there has been a safety and security issue and they did follow up you know for example there was a case I found uh oh I'm trying to remember the year it's it's from the 2000s where it involved an American Airlines flight seeing an unusual light to uh off the Atlantic coast of Canada. Two other flights also see the same light. The Canadian Air Force scrambles uh CF-18 fighter jets to investigate. They don't see anything. They return home. There's other cases where NORAD radar uh see detects a fastmoving object coming in from over the Arctic. Fighter jets are scrambled. Again, oftentimes the reports show they don't see anything. There's another one right here in Toronto where a Porter Airlines flight approaching uh the downtown Toronto Island airport coming in from Ottawa. It's cruising in over Lake Ontario and suddenly there is a donut-shaped object in its path right in front of it. The plane takes a bit of a nose dive evasive action to avoid hitting this object. And because the flight attendants weren't wearing their seat belts at the time, they were thrown into the cabin structure and they ended up getting sent to the hospital and the workplace injuries created uh a safety investigation. And there's literally hundreds of pages of documents and emails of them trying to get to the bottom of this case. I believe that one was 2016. So there are cases that >> did they get to the bottom of that one? I mean, that one sounds intriguing. what was the finding of the cause of the actual accident? >> The the they ultimately determined, you know, the official line that they ended up telling me and other members of the media was that the description of the object did not match any known commercially available drone. The internal emails I reviewed showed some degree of speculation that perhaps it was an experimental drone that drifted from a military base in upstate New York. Uh they were floating around images of a sort of donut fil like object uh that would have been filled with helium with a rotor in it. They said that kind of looked like it. Um, I've actually in this case I I wrote about it and afterwards the pilot reached out to me um to discuss it and and he said there there was, you know, I'm not going to go into details. It was an off the record conversation, but I I can tell you that he was never given a conclusive answer about what he saw. There thought maybe it could have been, you know, some kind of military drone, but it was all maybe there. There was no conclusive answer. They decided to end the investigation without determining what it was. The flight attendants only had minor injuries. They were released from hospital and that was that was the end of it. But the thing that really shocks me all the time about both the way the US, Canada and indeed Australia handle these reports is they often say there is no issue of national security posed by these UAP events. But it's becoming more and more implausible that assertion. It's certainly not only a national security incident that something is is breaching airspace without being identified. It's a flight safety issue as well. I mean, by any measure, what you're describing there is an acute flight safety issue. People were injured because of an unknown object in the sky that they had to avoid. >> Huge flight safety issue. Absolutely. Uh national security. I I see that. I I always, you know, I've said this before, I worry about the national security lens. I I was really happy about the Sky Canada project because of its scientific focus. Um, when I talk to journalists in the United States who research this issue, they have a really hard time accessing data. when your, you know, your national organizations, your defense officials are looking at this seriously as a defense issue, suddenly the everything can be withheld through freedom of information. Like I I've had a great deal of success pulling reports and cases in Canada precisely because it hasn't been viewed as a national security issue here. you know, had our military officials uh operated under that lens, I probably would have only have received a fraction of the data I have thus far. Uh the journalists I talked to in the United States, they can get a you know, officials to talk to them about UAPs much easier than we can in Canada, but but the data it becomes so scarce. Um but the the incidents, the shootown incidents, you know, show yeah, there's a national security nexus. Uh I I'm very but I'm very pleased and uh and supportive of the angle that the Sky Canada project took uh you know specifically that there is a scientific issue here that needs answering. But is anything going to is is anything going to happen Daniel? I mean by the sounds of it it's now stuck in the in the bureaucracy. You you you've said that the space agency of Canada doesn't want it on their desk. The manties are obviously keen for it to happen. Uh, is there any political impetus or is it just going to sit on a shelf and gather dust in the office of the chief scientist? >> Well, that's that's the real issue here. You know, with uh Larry Maguire retiring from politics, we no longer have a political public-f facing champion like that in Canada. We don't have anyone in parliament. I mean, you you look at the US, you have multiple members of Senate and Congress who are willing to keep hammering this issue. Uh in Canada with Maguire's retiring, we don't have anyone, I guess, willing to do so publicly. Uh I've had conversations that certainly show that there are members of parliament who are interested in the issue, but we don't seem to have anyone as quite as willing as Mr. Larry Magcguire quite as willing to stick their neck out and become a champion of the cause. And I think without that kind of political support, I'm I'm afraid this could be dead in the water. We have a brand new government in Canada. They're hyper fixated on a lot of the economic challenges posed uh by uh the Trump administration and its dealings with Canada. And for them to invest time and money into something of this nature does not seem very probable at this point in time. >> It's interesting, >> but you know, I'd love to be proven wrong. Um, >> it's interesting that you speculated that the donut shaped object that the plane tried to avoid might have come from an upstate New York US military base because of course the other thing that's been going on in this period is the uh I think they started around October, November last year, the overflights of parts of continental North America by what the government of the United States has euphemistically deemed drones. I don't know if that's an appropriate term, but were the drone sightings I've had messages from people in Canada, notably in Toronto, who've sent me videos and photographs of weird looking objects that that frankly look like aircraft, but are moving so pathetically slowly, in some cases, they're stationary. Um, they're not. Uh, have you had the same drone socalled alerts in um your part of North America? >> We I don't think we've had the kind of mass sightings that, you know, we were seeing on the northeast in the United States. But yeah, listen, I I I get emails, multiple emails a week from Canadians seeing things like this, you know, in Toronto, in way out in the middle of, you know, in small towns, in this middle of nowhere, in big cities. I mean, in the country, in the urban settings, people are seeing things. Um, you know, one other thing I I'd like to bring up about that uh that siting over Lake Ontario is that we also have um two significant nuclear power plants just outside of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario. Um I I want to bring this, you know, we talk about government transparency. I'm in a multi-year battle now to try and get uh security reports on uh UFO sightings from these nuclear power plants released. Um they have been denying They they're refusing to release them on it. >> They refused to release them. Uh this was a I'm trying to I think I first filed my request in 2022 if I'm not mistaken. Uh they refused to release them. I filed a complaint. Uh we went through mediation. They continued to refuse to release them and then in addition to refusing to release them, they uh hired outside counsel to create a legal justification that stated that they are, you know, a provincial crown corporation. So, a provincial governmental corporation runs these nuclear power plants. And what they're trying to argue now is that by following the provincial freedom of information legislation, they would therefore be in violation of their federal nuclear security obligations. And yet and yet and yet we have this Sky Canada report saying that one of the things that is most essential is for the public to be discouraged from developing conspiracy theories by being the government being as open as possible about everything that it knows on the subject of UAPs. It's a total contradiction, isn't it? >> But this isn't even just not being transparent. This is putting taxpayer money into fighting transparency. Uh thankfully I was able to find a a lawyer uh Josh Das uh with the Canadian Constitution Foundation who's taking on this case pro bono and you know the the Ontario power generation the the folks that operate this nuclear power plant were really trying to drown me in legal ease and I should mention because there is a nexus isn't there between nuclear plants nuclear power facilities and UAP sightings. Have you had anecdotal reports that that have led to you asking for these FOI reports? >> Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. >> Multiple multiple >> I I've had people reach out um not folks willing necessarily willing to go on the record and describe their stories, but I I I heard enough echoes of this that it prompted me to file these requests. They denied them. I immediately asked if records were, you know, identified. They said yes. And hence now I'm in this multi-year uh legal wrangling. Um yeah, we we hear that in the United States. We hear that in other countries that, you know, there have been interesting and significant sightings in and around nuclear facilities or nuclear weapon facilities. I very much want to see if that's the case in Canada. Uh but they are fighting me tooth and nail uh when it comes to getting these reports. >> Why do you think that is Daniel? I mean obviously there's a tendency I think for all of us to default to a conspiracy theory that they're trying to hide something. Um do you think there's a there's a good reason why they're trying to conceal this information? >> I'm a little biased here. I I think they they don't have no good reason. They don't want to deal with it. um you know their argument is that releasing these security reports would reveal vulnerabilities uh in their defenses. I have, you know, as I've actually toured some of the I've toured one of these nuclear power plants uh for an unrelated story and yeah, they're you know, you have guys with um assault rifles and high levels of security, but my my arguments has always been okay um release the reports, redact everything that could, you know, that could violate your security or make you folks vulnerable and provide me with the descriptions of, you know, these objects or lights themselves. but they they don't want to do that. >> I I think it's wonderful that you're getting pro bono legal assistance. Could you just name again the lawyer that's doing this good work on your behalf? >> Uh his name is Josh Das with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Uh Josh is a a former journalist. Actually, we met as journalists. Uh he left journalism to pursue a law career. And uh when this fight started heating up, I I I reached out to him and he just happened to be uh working with a a legal organization that you know takes on cases uh you know in terms of that deal with free speech or transparency and government secrecy. >> Good job. Good on him for doing that. I I also think it's it's important too that that one of the other things that came through to me from the Sky Canada report that I thought was really interesting was that not only do Canadians report somewhere between 600 to a,000 UAP sightings annually, they did a survey for Sky Canada and the surveys results are actually quite profound. One in four respondents said that they had personally witnessed a UAP in their lifetime. A quarter of respondents said they'd seen a UAP, but only 10% reported their sightings. And 40% of respondents wouldn't know whom to report their sightings to anyway. And interestingly, a majority of the respondents supported the idea of creating a federal government service to gather UAP reports and to make those findings publicly available. So, you really do have public opinion on your side, Daniel. >> Uh, absolutely. Um, and you know, when I when I saw that, that that was interesting that they hired a they commissioned an outside consulting company to do this work. Um, you know, I I would be one of those people. Many years ago, I saw some odd moving lights in the sky. And I didn't, you know, I'm like, "Huh, that's interesting." I didn't think anything of it. Didn't report it to anybody. And, you know, you get a group of people together or start asking people questions in a bar, you usually hear similar stories from people. Um, people see things and they, you know, most people don't want to stick their necks out. Um, and in my case, one, you know, I saw something weird like that as a kid. It was with my brother. We saw it. Wow. And we both remember it to this day, but you know, most people just don't repor