For at least eight years, when someone on Vancouver Island phoned the Canadian Armed Forces to report a UFO, the duty officer at 19 Wing Comox wrote it up and emailed it to a private UFO researcher in Winnipeg. Records released by National Defence show six of those forwarded reports between 2012 and 2020, each sent to the Hotmail address of Chris Rutkowski, who runs the Canadian UFO Survey, and most answered with a short thank-you.
The emails are part of two National Defence releases obtained through access-to-information requests. One, A-2021-01201, asked for UFO and CIRVIS records sent from five air force bases to a named individual between 1999 and 2021. The other, A-2023-00573, asked for CIRVIS, UFO, UAP and OVNI reports held by 1 Canadian Air Division in Winnipeg and the Canadian Air Defence Sector in North Bay from September 2022 to June 2023. Together they show what actually happens to a UFO report in Canada: who takes it, what form it goes on, and what is done next. In these files, the answer to the last question is almost always nothing beyond writing it down.
Government Files analyzes records released under Canada's access-to-information laws. The full documents and how we use them are at the end of this post.
Three Ways a UFO Report Reaches the Military
There are three routes in the records, depending on who sees the object. Members of the public phone a base. Pilots radio air traffic control, which passes the report to the military on a standard form. And when a sighting reaches the news, a public affairs team takes it from there.
The public route is the least formal. The Comox emails come from the wing's duty watch officers, the officers who staff the wing's operations desk. In February 2016 a military police dispatcher logged a call at 11:50 p.m. from a man who had been watching a UFO over Nanaimo for 45 minutes. "He said that he called the RCMP and they told him to call our number," the dispatcher wrote. The duty officer forwarded it to Rutkowski that morning with the note "For you info."
The other forwarded reports read the same way. Two orange glowing objects about 500 metres apart over Comox in January 2013, silent, changing from orange to purple-red. A resident and a neighbour seeing orange and white lights between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. for several weeks in June 2015. Something flying very low and fast over a Comox home in February 2018, with two red lights and one white. Two orange star-shaped objects hovering 200 to 300 feet above the ground near Winter Harbour in August 2020, seen from a boat. In September 2020 the message opened simply: "A UFO has been reported to CFB Comox; details are provided below."
The released records do not say how the arrangement started, whether it was approved, or whether other bases did the same. Rutkowski's replies are brief. "Thanks for this. Will follow up if necessary," he wrote in 2018.
The Logbook at the Other End of the Phone
Elsewhere, a call might end up as a single handwritten line. The same release contains pages from an air force Aerospace Control Log Book, the bound ledger where the operations desk records shift changes, alarm tests and incoming calls. The pages do not name the base, but the places callers mention, from Lac Kénogami to St-Fulgence and Mont Lac-Vert, are in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, home of 3 Wing Bagotville.
The entries sit between the routine ones. On August 31, 2019, a caller reported a circle in the sky turning on itself, with a black hole in the middle, descending. On March 19, 2020, a "concerned citizen" reported a convoy of "approx 100 aircraft" flying two abreast over Mont Lac-Vert the night before. On March 15, 2021, a caller from Saskatchewan described about 20 objects in a line formation, flying northeast "faster than an airliner." Later that afternoon another caller said fighter jets had passed low over his house and made a lot of noise; he had filmed them and wanted a call back.
One November 2021 entry records a man calling at 7:33 a.m. about an unknown white light. The duty clerk noted that radar showed no activity, that this was not the first time he had called, and that he "wants to protect the earth." No name was taken and no follow-up was requested.
The Form Pilots Use: CIRVIS
Pilots have a formal channel. In 2021, the air force explained it to a reporter: a sighting by any pilot in Canada, civilian or military, is reported through Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings, or CIRVIS, to the NAV CANADA flight information centre for the airspace. NAV CANADA passes it to the Canadian Air Defence Sector in North Bay, where the mission crew fills in an 11-item form and emails it to the NORAD region headquarters in Winnipeg.
The second release contains 15 of these reports from October 2022 to June 2023, 13 on the standard form and two as short narratives. Most come from airline crews at cruising altitude. A KLM Boeing 787 at 39,000 feet southwest of Halifax reported bright lights well above the aircraft for more than ten minutes in October 2022; on that form, item 9 reads "Possible Aliens." A Calm Air crew at 17,000 feet saw a light like a flare moving vertically "at a high rate of speed." Crews from WestJet, Air Canada and Flair all reported the same low white light near Thunder Bay one night in December 2022. An Air Canada pilot reported four bright lights changing direction fast and added that it "couldn't be an aircraft because no traffic in vicinity." A crew near St. Anthony, Newfoundland and Labrador, saw about four lights moving around each other, "creating geometric shapes (triangle to hexagon)."
Not every report comes from a cockpit. In May 2023 an observer at the Elginfield Observatory near London, Ontario, emailed NAV CANADA about a "long train of bubbles," overlapping semi-transparent spheres travelling south. The report reached North Bay nine days after the sighting.
Item 7 on the form asks what was done. On all 13 standard forms in the release it reads the same: "No Intercept or ID actions taken." Some forms offer an explanation in item 9; a December 2022 report of 19 points of light seen by a KLM crew bound for Edmonton notes "Suspect satellite reflections," attributed to an Air Canada crew that also saw the lights. Most say nothing more.
When the "UFO" Was the Balloon
One CIRVIS report in the file describes an object the military was already watching. On January 31, 2023, an Air Canada crew at 35,000 feet over southern British Columbia reported "a balloon with a structure beneath it" about 4,000 feet above them. A second Air Canada crew reported a similar object at 40,000 feet and took photos. The form notes that the pilot report "correlates to the Balloon TOI being tracked by CADS surveillance radars," and lists "Sniper Pod footage" among the available evidence.
The North Bay logs for that day record the same object from the inside: reports of "object hanging off bottom of object, looks as briefed," then "4-6 dishes on the structure." The log entry at 7:20 p.m. UTC reads "CIRVIS report generated from PIREP regarding Object Charlie." The track had crossed from Alaska into Canadian NORAD airspace the day before. It was the same reporting form used for lights over Thunder Bay, filed this time for a high-altitude balloon that NORAD was tracking across Canadian airspace. The military operation that followed the February 2023 shootdowns is covered in our earlier look at DND's OP UAP23 records.
The UFO That Reached the News
The third route is public affairs. On July 30, 2021, the crew of an RCAF C-17 Globemaster on a flight bound for Cologne as part of the evacuation of at-risk Afghan personnel reported to Gander air traffic control "a bright green flying object" that "flew into a cloud and then disappeared." The report appeared in Transport Canada's public incident database, and within two weeks reporters were asking about it.
The emails show the air force moving quickly. Public affairs officers at 1 Canadian Air Division recommended against giving the reporter an interview with the crew and asked 429 Transport Squadron for "a ground truth." The squadron's commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Matt Lederle, told the crew that public affairs would handle all questions. One of the pilots replied that "nobody said it was a flying object, just that it was an falling object. Two very distinct conditions. And it was rather spectacular."
The focus became a single claim. Coverage suggested the aircraft had taken evasive action. Lederle wrote that it had not, and that the course and altitude changes were for reaching the plane's oceanic entry point. He added that he had seen an online flight-tracking image that "looked kind of like an S-turn, I can't really explain that part, but suspect it's a data or visualization issue." Public affairs then drafted corrections to VICE Canada, the Daily Mirror and Quinte News stating that "no evasive action of any kind was taken or required."
The air force's answer to VICE, also in the file, is the plainest statement in either release about what happens to a pilot's report. "We believe that they saw something—they would not have filed a report otherwise," it said. Asked whether the incident would be investigated further: "At this time, there is no intent or need to investigate this further from the perspective of the RCAF."
What's Missing from the Records
Neither release explains what happens to a CIRVIS report after it reaches Winnipeg. In November 2022, when CTV asked about a February 2022 briefing the RCAF received from American UAP officials, National Defence drafted a line saying UAP information is not generally shared with the United States, though "information from CIRVIS reports may be communicated to NORAD HQ if/as appropriate." The line was flagged in the draft for checking, and the media query was later closed with the note "OBE," military shorthand for overtaken by events. Whether anyone reviews these forms as a set, or counts them, is not addressed.
The Comox arrangement is documented only from one side. The release contains the forwarded emails and Rutkowski's replies, but no policy, no instruction and no record of who decided that public UFO calls should go to a private researcher. The handwritten logbooks name no base and record calls without outcomes, and personal details of callers are withheld under section 19 of the Access to Information Act, which protects personal information.
The CIRVIS file is also incomplete. Several groups of pages are withheld under section 15(1), which covers international affairs, defence and security, and section 13(1), information received in confidence from foreign governments or international organizations. Those cover parts of the February 2023 balloon logs and parts of the imagery attached to them. A separate request for CFB Cold Lake's UFO records, A-2021-01970, does not fill the gap: the copy National Defence provided under that number contains the same Comox and Saguenay material as A-2021-01201, so what Cold Lake held remains unseen.
What the files do show is consistent. Canadians who see something in the sky are reaching the military by phone, by pilot radio and through air traffic control, and the military is writing it down. In these records, that is where it stops. It is the same pattern found in 15 years of Transport Canada UFO reports and in the National Research Council's informal sightings log.
Full Documents
The complete records this post is based on are available to download:
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All documents referenced are from National Defence, requests A-2021-01201 and A-2023-00573, obtained through Access to Information requests. The records consist of air force operations logbooks, 19 Wing Comox duty officer emails, 429 Transport Squadron and public affairs correspondence from August 2021, CIRVIS reports filed through the Canadian Air Defence Sector from October 2022 to June 2023, and related media-query records.
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 above.
