Defence Minister says Ottawa has no insight on whether Chinese aircraft gathered any Canadian information before the U.S. shot it down
that sailed over North America was able to gather from Canada, but that the Canadian air force did not shoot it down because it didn’t appear to pose a threat.
“The analysis of the balloon and contents, et cetera … is what the United States is undertaking on its own. We’re not part of that,” she said when asked if Canadian intelligence was compromised by the balloon. “That’s the analysis that they’re doing in terms of retrieval of the balloon.” John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House national-security council, said U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the craft shot down Friday because it was sitting at 12,000 metres, low enough to pose a threat to commercial aircraft. The spy balloon had been far higher, at more than 18,000 metres.
“We don’t understand the full purpose. We don’t have any information,” said Mr. Kirby, who added that the military would “be able to recover” the wreckage from where it crashed into Arctic sea ice. Both the U.S. and Canadian governments have been vague about when they first found the balloon. The aircraft appears to have crossed Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia and Idaho before civilians in Montana spotted it from the ground, which prompted the U.S. government to acknowledge its existence.
The U.S. military is in the process of recovering pieces of the craft from the ocean floor for analysis. So far, the U.S. has said the balloon was equipped with sensors for monitoring communications. In Montana, it was seen hovering near nuclear-missile silos.
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