Canada’s Chief Science Advisor found that public UAP reports were dispersed across agencies, rarely analysed and difficult for researchers to access. The proposed solution is a coordinated system built around evidence, open data and public communication.
Canada has an extensive history of recording UFO reports. When the Sky Canada Project reported in June 2025, however, it found no single modern system through which the public could submit an observation, receive an evidence-based assessment and later examine the result.
That contradiction is at the centre of the Sky Canada Project’s final report, published by the Office of the Chief Science Advisor. Rather than attempting to determine what UAP are, the project studied how Canadian institutions receive and manage reports — and how that process could be improved.
Its conclusion was direct: Canada’s approach was fragmented, inconsistent and poorly suited to transparent scientific analysis.
What the Sky Canada Project examined
The project began in the autumn of 2022 and was publicly announced in early 2023. Its team consulted federal departments, law-enforcement organizations, aviation bodies, researchers, journalists and civilian UAP groups. It also reviewed historical records, examined systems used in other countries and commissioned a 2024 online survey of Canadian attitudes.
The study had firm boundaries. It did not collect or analyse individual sightings, photographs or videos. It was not intended to prove or disprove extraterrestrial life, and the Office of the Chief Science Advisor did not propose itself as Canada’s future UAP reporting centre. Read the complete Sky Canada report.
This distinction matters. Sky Canada was a review of public administration and scientific infrastructure, not a case investigation or an announcement about the origin of UAP.
A reporting system with no central destination
Canadian organizations sometimes receive UAP reports because those reports overlap with their existing responsibilities. An unusual object might reach Transport Canada as an aviation occurrence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a public-safety call or the Department of National Defence as a possible threat.
According to the report, few federal organizations investigate sightings unless they fall within a specific safety, security or regulatory mandate. Most do not compile the reports they receive, and different bodies use different forms and classifications. Information can therefore remain distributed across government databases and non-governmental organizations without a common standard or follow-up process.
The report identified five central gaps:
- no cohesive and standardised system for reporting and follow-up;
- no accessible official platform for public reports and explanations;
- limited analysis unless a case presents an apparent safety or security concern;
- insufficient participation by the scientific community; and
- limited science-literacy efforts to counter misinformation and misidentification.
The problem is not that Canada has never preserved UFO records. Library and Archives Canada provides access to approximately 9,500 digitised government documents accumulated from 1947 into the early 1980s, including reports, correspondence, memoranda and procedures from defence, transport, scientific and police organizations. The gap identified in 2025 concerned how new observations were collected, connected and assessed. Explore Canada’s historical UFO records.
What Canadians told the project
The survey commissioned for Sky Canada found that one in four respondents said they had witnessed a UAP at some point in their lives. The report says only 10 percent had reported their sighting, while 40 percent of respondents would not know whom to contact.
These figures describe responses to a commissioned online survey, not a verified count of unexplained objects. The report also cites public estimates of between 600 and 1,000 Canadian sightings per year, but acknowledges that the absence of central collection makes an authoritative national total difficult to establish.
The policy finding is clearer than the phenomenon itself: a majority of survey respondents supported a federal service that would collect reports and make its findings public.
The 14 recommendations
Sky Canada grouped its proposals into four areas. Together they describe a system in which reports would enter through a clear channel, be shared with the relevant expertise, analysed using comparable data and communicated publicly.
| Area | Proposed actions |
|---|---|
| Reporting and oversight | Designate a lead federal body; establish a dedicated reporting and investigation service; strengthen reporting by pilots, cabin crews and air-traffic controllers |
| Communication | Create a proactive public strategy; improve cooperation across government; respond to media inquiries; use a multidisciplinary expert panel to address misinformation |
| Research | Provide open data; conduct periodic surveys; support citizen science; develop standardised digital collection tools; involve Canada’s astronomy and aerospace communities |
| International cooperation | Share data and methods with organizations such as AARO, NASA, GEIPAN and SEFAA; pursue joint research and public communication |
The proposed dedicated service would do more than receive forms. The report says it should collect testimony, investigate cases, publish its analyses and proactively explain common observations to Canadians. A federal lead would also give police, aviation and other agencies somewhere to forward relevant information. See the report’s 14 recommendations.
Why aviation reporting receives special attention
One recommendation is directed specifically at Transport Canada and NAV CANADA. It calls for pilots, cabin crews and air-traffic controllers to be encouraged to report observations without fear of stigma. The two organizations would then analyse reports for patterns and provide explanations that could reduce uncertainty and distraction during flight.
This frames UAP reporting as an operational issue before it becomes a debate about extraordinary explanations. A pilot does not need to identify the origin of an object before reporting that it affected situational awareness or appeared close to a flight path.
Better reporting would also need to preserve the details required for analysis: exact time, location, viewing direction, duration, weather, aircraft position and original sensor files. A central database can make reports easier to count, but standardised, well-preserved data are what make them easier to investigate.
Open data as a test of transparency
The report recommends that UAP data be made publicly available both for transparency and independent research. That proposal could allow outside specialists to test official findings, compare recurring explanations and identify patterns that would be invisible in isolated reports.
Meaningful open data require context. A short narrative or unexplained label is less useful than a record that includes provenance, metadata, analytical steps and a clear account of what information is missing. Privacy, aviation security and national-security restrictions may require redactions, but the reason for withholding information can itself be documented.
The report also connects transparency with public communication. When authorities do not provide timely explanations, the information gap can be filled by speculation, recycled claims or deliberate disinformation. Its proposed answer is not simply to dismiss unusual reports, but to create a trusted institution capable of examining and explaining them.
A blueprint is not implementation
The 14 recommendations were presented for consideration by the Government of Canada. The report did not itself designate the responsible department, create a reporting portal, compel agencies to share data or provide the funding required for a permanent investigation service.
Its significance is therefore best measured as a blueprint. It defines the institutional problem and sets out practical criteria by which future progress can be judged:
- Has a federal lead been publicly identified?
- Is there one clear reporting channel?
- Are witnesses given meaningful follow-up?
- Are methods, results and usable data published?
- Can independent researchers evaluate the conclusions?
Sky Canada did not answer what UAP are. It explained why Canada’s existing system was poorly equipped to answer that question — and what a more transparent, scientific and accountable alternative could look like.
