Wearing my Canadian military historian hat, here:

Over the last 60 years or so, the Department of National Defence has received literally thousands of communications of various kinds demanding that the Canadian Forces cough up what it knows about UFOs, and every single such communication has received the same reply: "We know nothing." The CF knows and reports a lot of stuff about marsh gas, the Aurora Borealis, meteorites and thunderstorms, but those hot in pursuit of flying saucers just don't want to know.

Back in the '60s and '70s, the heyday of UFO "research", my Dad was the guy who answered those letters (shaking his head) and I've seen some of them in the files -- he did the job honestly. During the late 1980s, I was employed at the National Archives of Canada and the historical section at National Defence Headquarters, and I handled some of that correspondence, too -- 100 percent bran flakes.

Mr. Hellyer has always been -- shall we say -- an adventurous thinker. And don't blame him for the unification of the CF: he just happened to be in the chair when the project went into the implementation phase.