Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions. This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full below.
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The National Research Council officially stopped collecting public reports of unidentified flying objects in 1995. Internal records released through Access to Information show that nearly three decades later, NRC astronomers were still fielding the calls — filling out sky observation reports, debating media strategy, and quietly trying to identify what people had seen.
The records were released in response to an ATI request for all NRC documents concerning unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena over Canadian territory between January 2019 and March 2024. The release file, A-2023-46, runs 79 pages and consists almost entirely of internal email correspondence, completed sky observation forms, and forwarded media inquiries handled by staff at NRC's Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics centre in Victoria, B.C.
What the Documents Show
The package contains no formal investigations, no analytical reports, and no operational data on UAP. What it does contain is a paper trail of how a federal science agency continues to absorb the public's unanswered questions about strange lights in the sky long after Ottawa formally walked away from the file.
One of the earliest emails in the release, from February 2019, captures the institutional reflex. After a Canadian wrote to the NRC president seeking 1960s film footage of an "unknown target" filmed over Edmonton's Mayfield neighbourhood, the request was forwarded to Luc Simard, then director general of Herzberg. His response set the template that recurs throughout the file: refer the public to amateur astronomy clubs, note that NRC has no domestic facilities for that kind of observation, and never kept an archive from other sources either.
Yet the requests kept coming. The release captures sky observation reports filled out by NRC staff for sightings in Chemainus, Salt Spring Island, Victoria, Colwood, Carmanah, and the Okanagan. In most cases, the public caller had first contacted local media — including CHEK TV in one Victoria-area case — and been redirected to NRC's general inquiries line.
The internal staff response evolved over the period. By 2020, the agency was navigating a new pressure: SpaceX's Starlink satellite trains were generating waves of UFO reports across British Columbia. A March 2020 voicemail summary forwarded to NRC staff lists four separate calls in a single weekend describing "very bright blue and red lights," "several objects in the sky...like 50 of them....looked like a satellite train," and objects "veering to the right and then at 90 degree angles."
In another email chain, a senior astronomer wrote that NRC should "be careful to not give any impression that UFOs are part of our research programs," noting that past replies have explained the agency has "no active research in this area and therefore no UFO expert on hand." The same email cautioned staff against trivialising callers' experiences, citing one media request the agency had previously declined because the outlet planned to make fun of UFO sightings.
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The 1995 Cut-Off and What Replaced It
An October 2019 media call from a journalist preparing a feature on UFO reporting prompted NRC's media relations team to formally confirm the institutional history. The agency's response, drafted internally before being shared with the reporter, states that the NRC began collecting reports of UFO sightings in 1968 after taking over the responsibility from the Department of National Defence, which transferred sighting reports dating from 1965. The NRC stopped collecting this information in 1995. The records do not specify a reason for the transfer of responsibility from DND in the first place.
A separate 2022 email from an NRC manager provides additional context: the 1995 shutdown happened under then-director general Don Morton, in the same wave of cuts that closed the Algonquin Radio Observatory as part of finance minister Paul Martin's program review. Files received before that decision were transferred to Library and Archives Canada, where they remain accessible as part of the "Canada's UFOs: The search for the unknown" collection.
What replaced formal collection was, in effect, nothing. The records show NRC staff in 2019 confirming to media that the agency "has not received any documented enquiries from Canadians regarding UFOs" since 1995 — a statement that sits awkwardly alongside the dozens of pages of sky observation reports, voicemails, and email exchanges in the same release package showing exactly that activity continuing through 2023.
Starlink and the New UFO Problem
If there is a single thread that runs through the post-2019 portion of the release, it is the rise of SpaceX's Starlink constellation as a generator of public confusion. A May 2021 internal newsletter sent by an NRC astronomer to Herzberg colleagues identifies a video clip sent to the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Keremeos, B.C. as another Starlink deployment, noting that a SpaceX launch earlier that day had passed above the southwestern horizon at roughly the same time.
The same internal note acknowledges that with the upcoming release of the U.S. military's preliminary UAP assessment expected the following month, "reports of UFO sightings will probably reach a level this summer we have not seen in recent years." A later Herzberg email warned that NASA's then-newly approved LightCube CubeSat — designed to flash on command from amateur radio operators — would produce "more UFO reports" as a side effect of its educational mission.
The release also documents a December 2021 case in which an acquaintance of an NRC scientist sent in photographs of a hovering light above the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. Internal email exchanges between two Herzberg staff members worked through the analysis: the bright "stars" in the image were eventually identified as hot pixels — single-pixel camera defects common in uncooled cameras at long exposures — and the central object was likely the landing lights of an aircraft approaching from the south, made to "shoot up" and disappear by the geometry of the approach. Staff reached the conclusion privately. There is no indication in the records that the photographer was ever told.
How NRC Handles the Press
The release contains repeated examples of NRC's media relations team coordinating with Herzberg leadership on whether and how to respond to UFO-related press inquiries. The pattern is consistent: decline where possible, defer where appropriate, and avoid headlines that could be read as endorsement.
A February 2020 email exchange about a media call related to a UFO sighting and video shows then-director Ken Tapping recommending the agency leave the call alone. He noted that, based on the available data, he had no idea what the object was other than possibly Sirius or Venus, both of which had been visible in the sky for weeks. He added that the possible headline "No astronomical explanation for UFO" would not be something NRC would want its name on.
A May 2021 media call from a journalist working on an article about the uptick in Canadian UFO sightings during the pandemic — a period when, as the reporter put it, Canadians were "stuck at home with little to do but look to the skies" — was declined by acting director general Morrick Vincent on the recommendation of the communications team.
The agency's standard public-facing line, repeated across multiple media responses in the file, points Canadians toward the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada for general questions about the night sky and toward Transport Canada for any aviation safety concerns.
The Sky Canada Project Arrives
By March 2023, an internal Herzberg email referenced the launch of Sky Canada — the first official federal investigation into UFO reporting in Canada in three decades, established under the Office of the Chief Science Advisor. The same email noted, with a degree of professional reserve, that the project's slide deck explicitly stated the investigation "is not meant to confirm or deny the existence of extraterrestrial life or extraterrestrial visitors." The federal mandate, in other words, was process review rather than data collection — examining how UAP reports are handled in Canada and recommending improvements.
The records released under A-2023-46 read, in retrospect, like the conditions Sky Canada was launched to address. A federal agency with no formal mandate was still receiving sightings, still completing observation forms, still privately identifying objects, and still calibrating its public messaging around them. The documents do not show an institution avoiding the topic. They show one absorbing it without infrastructure.
What's Not in the Documents
The original ATI request asked for all records concerning UFOs or UAP over Canadian territory between 2019 and 2024. The released file contains correspondence, sky observation reports, and media-handling material, but no analytical assessments, no investigative findings, and no shared records with the Department of National Defence, Transport Canada, or the Office of the Chief Science Advisor.
The absence is consistent with NRC's stated position that it stopped collecting sighting data in 1995 and has no UFO mandate. But the practical effect is that no federal department holds a current, consolidated record of UAP reports filed by the Canadian public — a gap the Sky Canada Project's terms of reference appear to acknowledge.
Readers seeking historical Canadian UFO records will find them in the Library and Archives Canada collection referenced in the release, which contains materials accumulated between 1947 and the early 1980s. For more recent Canadian UAP analysis, a 2025 University of Manitoba study using AI to classify 1,052 UFO sightings reported across Canada found that only about 3% remained unexplained after analysis.
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Support Government FilesAll correspondence, sky observation forms, and media-handling records referenced are from the National Research Council of Canada, request A-2023-46, obtained through an Access to Information request. The release covers internal NRC records concerning UFO and UAP sightings between January 2019 and March 2024 and consists of 79 pages of email correspondence, completed sky observation reports, and forwarded media inquiries.
