PM says teams are working to recover downed object that posed ‘reasonable’ threat to aviation | CBC News

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says teams are currently working to “find and analyze” an object shot down on Saturday, which he said posed a “reasonable threat” to civil aviation.

“The safety of Canadians is our No. 1 priority, that’s why I made the decision to shoot down the object. It was a threat to civil aviation and a potential threat to Canadians,” Trudeau said in brief remarks on Sunday morning.

The prime minister was speaking from the Ottawa airport ahead of a trip to Whitehorse. The trip comes just a day after Trudeau made the decision to down an “unidentified object” over the Yukon. The trip was pre-planned — to participate in the Council of Yukon First Nations’ 50th anniversary celebrations — and unrelated to Saturday’s events.

A senior government source with direct knowledge of the situation told CBC News that the federal government was first alerted to the object on Friday night, when it was still travelling through Alaska.

Trudeau ordered the object shot down by whichever country arrived at it first, and an American F-22 destroyed it at about 3:41 p.m. ET.

“To the best of our knowledge, this was the first time that a NORAD operation has downed an aerial object,” Defence Minister Anita Anand told a news conference on Saturday.

While Trudeau on Saturday described the object as “unidentified,” Maj. Olivier Gallant, a spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defence Command, told The Associated Press that the military had determined what it was but would not reveal details.

Trudeau did not share any additional details about the nature of the object on Sunday, saying only that “teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyze the object.”

“There’s still much to know about it, that’s why the analysis of this object is going to be very important,” he said.

A source with direct knowledge of the situation told CBC News that the closest city to the debris was Dawson City, Yukon. The RCMP said Sunday it had also deployed resources to help with the search efforts.

Speaking to ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the United States believes that both the object destroyed Saturday over Canada and one downed Friday near Alaska were balloons.

On Feb. 4, American aircraft shot down what the U.S. asserts was a Chinese surveillance balloon, though China says it was a weather balloon. Schumer said on Sunday he had been briefed that the objects destroyed Friday and Saturday were much smaller than the one downed over the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month.

Scott Clancy, a retired Canadian major-general and former director of operations for NORAD, told CBC News on Saturday that it was likely there was something “nefarious” about the object.

“Taking this kind of action and making that public for something that is not nefarious — that doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Elbridge Colby, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defence, told CBC News that if it’s confirmed three different balloons were shot down, there are potentially more flying objects coming in the future.

“If, in fact, there have been three balloons in the space of a week and a half, we should see more,” he said.

U.S. Democratic Congressman Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House of Representative intelligence committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he had not received a thorough briefing on the two most recent objects. But he suggested that the incidents may not be part of a broad, organized surveillance strategy — but instead are occurring because security agencies are focusing on objects like balloons rather than traditional concerns such as fast-moving missiles or military aircraft.

“My speculative guess as to why we’re seeing these things happen in quick succession is that now we’re really attuned to looking for them,” he said.