‘Some sort of pattern’: Canadian PM Trudeau on 4 aerial objects downed over North America

Click here for updates on this story

    TORONTO (CTV Network) -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there is clearly a pattern with four aerial objects shot down over Canada and the United States in the last 10 days, but there is still much to learn from the debris recovery and analysis.

"I think obviously there is some sort of pattern in there. The fact that we are seeing this in a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention, which is exactly what we're doing," Trudeau said during a media availability in Whitehorse about the unusual series of takedowns.

He met in Yukon with the Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP officials who are leading the search efforts to recover the "unidentified object" shot down on his order on Saturday. Trudeau said it’s an "extraordinary" effort being conducted in collaboration with Indigenous leaders.

"We've deployed significant resources here to be able to recover the object, as well as diplomatic and international engagements going on to find more information and get solutions on this," he said.

Trudeau described the ongoing Canadian-led effort to locate the downed object amid sparsely populated and rugged northern territory as "challenging" but vowed that the hunt will continue until debris is "hopefully" located.

The takedown has been described as a first-of-its-kind operation from the joint Canada-U.S military organization responsible for airspace defence, known as Norad. Trudeau was defensive Monday about the role Canada played, saying that his focus is "not on which side gets credit" but that the object posing "a threat" was shot down without incident.

Trudeau's comments come after he vowed over the weekend to keep people informed about the situation that Pentagon officials have said has no peacetime precedent.

"This is a very serious situation that we are taking incredibly seriously. The actions we're taking to protect North American airspace, the actions we're taking to recover and analyze these objects, the importance of defending our territorial integrity, our sovereignty, has rarely been as important as it is now," Trudeau said on Monday. "There is much analysis going on at the highest levels of Norad."

Here's a brief summary of the objects downed to date:

Feb. 4, on the order of U.S. President Joe Biden, a U.S. fighter jet shot down what previously had been identified as a Chinese surveillance balloon, off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina after it spent a week traversing Canada and the U.S. Feb. 10, an F-22 fighter jet shot down an unmanned high-altitude cylindrical object the size of a small car, off the coast near Deadhorse, Alaska. It was heading towards Canadian airspace. Feb. 11, on Trudeau's order, a U.S. fighter jet downed an unidentified "cylindrical object" over central Yukon about 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border. Some have described this object as a balloon, though considerably smaller than the original Chinese balloon. Feb. 12, over Lake Huron on the Canada-U.S. border, U.S. fighter jets shot down an octagonal object travelling at 20,000 feet that appeared to have dangling strings but no payload.

With searches still underway in the three most recent instances, the U.S. military has not yet identified what the objects are, how they stayed airborne, or where they originated, as Reuters has reported. CANADA 'BEING VERY CAUTIOUS': FORMER CSIS HEAD

In a Monday morning interview on CNN, Defence Minister Anita Anand offered no new details about the recent Canadian downing or the object's origins.

"At this point, we are not able to speculate on the precise parameters of the object from the visual that we received," Anand said, declining to say if there was any indication that the object was from China. "It would be imprudent for me to speculate further at this time, until we gathered the debris and until we do the analysis. The FBI is involved in that analysis, as is the RCMP here in Canada."

In an interview on CTV's Question Period with Vassy Kapelos on Sunday, prior to the shooting down of the fourth aerial object, former national security adviser and past head of Canada's spy agency CSIS Richard Fadden said Anand is "being very cautious, particularly when her colleagues in the United States are not."

"I don't really understand why, except it falls into the Canadian tradition of being very reticent to comment on national security issues," he said.

Fadden said that if he was Trudeau's current national security adviser, he'd be "more worried" now that there have been multiple instances of unknown aerial objects in or around Canadian airspace.

U.S. shoots down 4 flying objects: What we know about the locations

"I would be rather more worried than I was when the first balloon appeared. I mean, once you can argue there was a mistake, even if it was intentional," said Fadden.

"If this is indeed the Chinese, they are being far more aggressive than they usually are… they can be aggressive, but they're subtle. Whatever this is they are not subtle, so I would begin to worry a little bit."

The unprecedented series of events have prompted NATO Secretary General General Jens Stoltenberg to call on countries in that military alliance to stay vigilant, speculating that what's taking place is "part of a pattern" of increasing Chinese and Russian surveillance activities against NATO allies.

As MPs convene in Ottawa it's expected opposition MPs will be pressing for more answers from the federal government.

With files from CTV News' Parliamentary bureau, CTVNews.ca's Daniel Otis and Michael Lee, and The Associated Press

For more news from CTVNews.ca, sign up for one of our newsletters: ctvnews.ca/newsletters

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.