The Current - Chief science adviser recommends Canada start monitoring for UFOs

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Canada’s chief science adviser is recommending that the federal government start tracking information about bizarre sightings in the sky, whether they’re Chinese balloons or even UFOs. Proponents, such as researcher Chris Rutkowski, believe that keeping track will allow us to gain a better understanding of what is happening in the upper atmosphere.

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Have you ever spotted something in the sky you couldn't quite identify? Well, you're not alone. Seeing a light that is lifting up, I know the difference between a light on the horizon and a light coming out of the water. When you've been on the water more in your life than you haven't been, you know the difference. That's one of several examples of US military personnel spotting an unidentified aerial phenomenon or a UAP. though most of us still call them

UFOs. The Pentagon turned heads in 2020 by releasing footage of pilots witnessing bizarre objects in the sky. In Canada, there are between 600 and 1,000 sightings of unidentified flying objects every year. And while there's no evidence these are alien ships, Canada's chief science advisor Mona Nehmer is now recommending the government create a new federal body to standardize, collect and investigate UAP sightings. It's part of a new report released earlier this

week from her office and the Sky Canada project. Chris Rutkowski is a researcher who was consulted on that project. Chris, good morning. Good morning. Let's get this out of the way first. Are there aliens flying around Canadian skies? Darned if I know. What we do know is that somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of all Canadians believe they've seen UFOs, unidentified flying objects. And while the public perception is that these are alien craft of some sort, there's simply no evidence of that. And with my background in astronomy, I share the understanding there's life out there somewhere, but it's a long way from here to there. So broadly speaking, what does this new report say?

So broadly speaking, what does this new report say? Well, this report was mandated to find out what has been done regarding unidentified aerial phenomena in Canada in the past, what's being done at the present time in various offices and departments, and what should be done with public and citizen reports of these phenomena. And to that end, it's done an admirable job. The team in Ottawa has really poured through all the available information, consulted with various departments and offices

all the way from RCMP and national defense to civilian organizations, and painted a very interesting picture of what is really going on. And can you tell me what the Sky Canada project is? Well, this was the Sky Canada project. It was produced within the office of the Chief Science Advisor for Canada, who reports directly to the Prime Minister, by the way, to understand what exactly unidentified aerial phenomena are being reported and where. Better understand, you know, how can this be approached? It made a number of recommendations on how to proceed from here. A lot of it involves

public education, science communication, and listening to the public. Rather than just dismissing out of hand, there's no such thing as UAP or UFOs. It's actually more helpful to engage the public and try and get a better understanding of where they are. And why is that helpful? I mean, what is it helping with if it's not sort of related to aliens or that sort of thing.

Well, you know, there's a lot of things that aren't alien that are unidentified in the sky originally. For example, National Defense uses the category unidentified aerial phenomena with regard to NORAD tracking of objects. Those balloons and Chinese things that were flying around and shot down in 2023 were given the designation unidentified aerial phenomena. And there's about 250 of those tracked as we understand from NORAD every year. And some of the civilian observations of these same objects, in fact, the Chinese balloon that was shot down seems to have been observed by civilian pilots six months early. That was the one in 2023?

2023, yeah. And the year before, something very similar, a very large balloon with a large instrument packet was seen flying over New Brunswick by civilian pilots, by civilians. So there is a coordination between what civilians are reporting and what national defense is recording. So in that sense, there is a need to understand what's going on. And with a greater push of the geopolitical climate that's more challenging, there's a push for defense. And this is certainly part of it. But the civilian aspect is that, you know, the average person on the street does report things and that they don't understand.

There is a need from the Sky Canada project in its belief that there's a greater need for better scientific communication with the public and doing away with misinformation and in fact disinformation in some cases. Right. Now, the United States government has been looking into this for quite some time and there were the Pentagon reports I mentioned along with congressional hearings on UFOs. Why is Canada stepping up its interest now? Well, you know, the Sky Canada project was produced partly because of what was going

on in the United States. Certainly within Canada, a number of politicians, MPs and others were questioning whether the government of Canada should be involved as well. And Canada has played a major role in international scientific efforts. Canada has been involved in searches for extraterrestrial intelligence and things like that. I'm part of the Galileo Project, which is a study, a group based out of Harvard, mostly scientists who are trying to understand what is flying up there and trying to track them using observation posts and understanding reports and analyzing them from a scientific standpoint.

So Canada's contribution to science is really quite paramount. The difference between the United States and Canada is that Canada, believe it or not, is much more transparent. We really don't know what the American government and military have been doing in tracking in terms of UAP because in fact the Americans, all domain anomaly research program is really only interested in military observations, whereas Canada is looking more at not just the military aspect, but also civilian. And we have more transparency because we have a complete record almost of observations of UAP and UFOs between

1947 and the present time from both civilian and military witnesses. Danielle Pletka Why isn't the United States more transparent? Dr. Richard Hildebrand That's a really good question. I think it's because they're looking at this phenomena, UAP, more from a military and defense aspect and security aspect, whereas in Canada, although Canada is partnered with United States in NORAD and obviously is very interested in UAP, the Canadian approach has been more scientific. The National Research Council of Canada investigated UFO reports from 1967 until 1995 when it shifted its focus into other things like the Canadarm and the Space Agency and so forth. And the RCMP in Canada investigated

UFOs on behalf of the National Research Council. So it's been 30 years since Canadian scientists have been taking a look at what Canadian citizens are reporting. And I think it's been 30 years since Canadian scientists have been taking a look at what Canadian citizens are reporting. And I think it's a good idea to revisit that. Now, you know, listening to you and just sort of imagining what could happen if such an agency were set up, are there risks that by setting up such a reporting tracking system that you're legitimizing the idea that there's actually evidence of space aliens. I mean, are you going to get a lot of kooks phoning in? Well, someday I'll have to show you my email inbox to answer that question. But the reality is there are very good observers

who are reporting things, you know, civilian pilots, airline pilots and so forth that are seeing unusual things. And one would question that, you know, if airline pilots are seeing things that shouldn't be there, things are being tracked on their radar, their collision avoidance system is malfunctioning. To me, that's a concern. There's a public safety concern there as well. And, you know, the problem is, yes, the public does have this view that unidentified aerial phenomena and UFOs might mean aliens, but part of the Sky Canada project is this desire for a greater communication, science awareness. You know, the side of a community could be doing a better job in communicating science to the public.

You know, given that we have practically a measles epidemic now and anti-masking and anti-vaxxing and all this sort of stuff, I think that the scientific community really has to communicate better with the public, just basic science. And what a better way to introduce good science and to talk with people about what is actually being seen and the possibility of alien life and yet the absence of complete evidence. Right now veering away from science for a second now do you have a juicy UFO story you can share very very quickly before we go?

Well, of course, we've had cases across Canada. There was a fellow in Falcon Lake in Manitoba in 1967 who said he was burned by something that landed near him. And that was investigated by not only National Defense, but also the RCMP. And the conclusions of the RCMP and National Defense both said they could not come up with a satisfactory explanation for the case. It doesn't mean that he was burned by an alien ship, but it meant that we even have the medical records. It means that there should be some mechanism by which such cases could be studied in greater depth and shared.

Transparency is a really big issue. Chris, thanks so much for speaking with us. Thank you. Chris Rutkowski is a science writer and UFO researcher. Joe Schwartz was also consulted for the UAP report. He's the director of McGill's Office for Science and Society. Good morning, Joe. Hey, good morning.

By the sound of it, there are a lot of unidentified objects in Canada's skies. How do you explain what these might be? Well, most of them, of course, have been explained as either being missile launches or cloud formations or camera artifacts, aircraft, light reflections, balloons, satellites, birds, sometimes planets, especially Venus is mistaken for some kind of flying object. And of course, there have been some very clever hoaxes out there as well. So it isn't surprising that there are many, many reports of unidentified objects in the sky. But obviously just because they have not been identified exactly doesn't mean that they're extraterrestrial.

So what do you make of this proposal for the federal government to continue investigating UFOs or UAPs? Well, actually, when I first heard that this document was going to be made public, I had a bit of a concern because I thought that it would kind of create the illusion that the government was looking into extraterrestrials. But when I read it, it actually was very comforting because what the document really is, is a plea for good science communication. And this is what my office is all about.

This is what we emphasize is the importance of making observations and coming to the right conclusion. So in this age of misinformation and disinformation, I think a document like this, that emphasizes the importance of scientific investigation and of eliminating misinformation, I think this is welcome. And so it is kind of right up my alley because of the observation conclusion phenomenon and this is something that I've been interested for a very long time because

in addition to being a professor of chemistry, I have a background in magic. I've been doing magic since I was in elementary school and magicians generally are skeptics, because what are you really doing, you know, when you're, when you're doing a magic performance, you're trying to steer the audience to the wrong conclusion about what they're observing, right? When you show an empty hat, and you proceed to pull a rabbit out, you expect the audience to conclude that the rabbit magically materialized out of nothing, totally contrary to the laws of nature. And yeah, I did perform that, you know, with a live rabbit until the rabbit got too big for the hat. I went to a synthetic rabbit. But of course course there's a scientific explanation for how this works.

The same way I got interested in scientific explanations for all the UFO phenomena, particularly the 1947 Roswell incident which really started the whole business when it was believed that an actual flying saucer had landed and that the military was trying to hide it. And it turned out to be a crashed balloon, a spy balloon that was being used to monitor Soviet rocket launches. But the government actually maintained the idea that it may have been a flying saucer because they wanted to hide the fact that it may have been a flying saucer because they wanted to hide the fact that it was really a military operation on the

Soviets. It's interesting to look into these phenomena and see just what the truth is behind it. I'm just, what do you think though, or how do you think the public perception of UFOs would be affected by setting up this body tracking these incidents? Now you mentioned you know, attention to hoaxes or people with... I'm not too worried about that. I mean, I think the kooks are out there, you know, and they will always be out there. They're not the ones who are going to be reading this. Their minds are already made up. But I think the people who read this will be well informed about the importance of separating fact from myth. The only thing I

question is the funding. I don't know how much money is going to be devoted to this. Because throughout the years, numerous countries have had all kinds of investigations. I mean the US of course is the one that's always talked about, but there are dozens of other countries that have explored this phenomenon. France has a program. Yeah, you know, they've all come to the conclusion that while a very small percentage of these phenomena are not explained, most of them are explained. And just because some are not explained, you can't conclude that therefore these are extraterrestrial visitors.

Now, we requested an interview with the chief science advisor, Mona Nehmer, but she declined. But in a statement to The Current, her office said that their 14 recommendations, if followed by the government, could come at a minimum cost. So if this was done without much extra cost, would you have any objections to track it? No, I have no objection because I think it would actually be a good idea to sort of have all of these sightings coalesce in one central place, because then patterns may emerge that we don't see when these phenomena

are reported to all kinds of different agencies. So having some kind of centralized focus, I think there's no harm that is going to come out of this. But I think that the dedicated ufologists But, you know, I think that the dedicated ufologists are not going to be, you know, swayed by this document that proposes to separate misinformation from proper information. Right. Are there any other steps that could be taken so that, you know, misinformation about these sorts of things isn't made worse? I think that the way to fight misinformation is by proper information. And, you know, I mean, that is always what we try to do through my office. So when you provide proper explanations for what phenomena are,

then people will question ones that have not yet been explained. So for example, there's the famous case of Barney and Betty Hill, who were the first supposed abductees by aliens. And they were on a trip from Montreal back to New Jersey, when all of a sudden, you know, they said they saw a disc hovering over their head, and then two hours were suddenly missing from their life. And this was thoroughly investigated,

and they underwent hypnosis. And from that, we learned that under hypnosis, people can manufacture, you know, visions and because the the couple had discussed this phenomenon between themselves under hypnosis they did in fact create you know the same kind of stories so we learned a lot about imagination and how these things can come about and when you start explaining this scientifically then people will look at the ones that have not been explained and say, well, you know, maybe there is a scientific explanation. Yeah. Joe, thanks very much for speaking with me today. Fascinating.

You're very welcome. Joe Schwartz is the director of McGill's Office for Science and Society. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.