At the time, Conservative MPs raised questions in the House of Commons about whether the Liberal government had authorized illegal surveillance of the protesters.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed the flights were part of military training, but said the plane was not involved in surveillance of demonstrators. He said the questions from Conservative MPs were “dangerously close to misinformation and disinformation.”
When questions were first asked about the flights, National Defence tried to avoid being linked to the aircraft. Then the department acknowledged the flights were part of military training involving intelligence gathering and surveillance equipment.
It was only after military sources revealed the aircraft was being operated by Canadian special forces that National Defence acknowledged that link.
The U.S.-registered King Air aircraft was airborne over Ottawa on Jan. 28, Jan. 29, Feb. 3, Feb. 10 and Feb. 11, according to data collected by Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa researcher who tracks the movements of vessels and planes.
The flights coincided with the large-scale protests in downtown Ottawa.
National Defence spokesperson Dan Le Bouthillier acknowledged at the time that the aircraft was in use by Canadian special forces as part of a training mission on Feb. 10, but he said the flight had nothing to do with the protests.
Le Bouthillier said the special forces training was already planned before the Ottawa protests and to have cancelled the flight would have been wasting money.
This newspaper later reported the flights took place despite a military directive that was supposed to prohibit such activities. Canadian special forces leaders reasoned they didn’t have to follow the military directive since the surveillance plane they were using was owned by a private defence contractor, National Defence noted.
Canadian special forces had access to similar aircraft in Afghanistan to track and target insurgents. The U.S. military operates similar surveillance aircraft.
Modifications to a hangar that will house the aircraft at 8 Wing Trenton were completed in early 2023, McKelvey said.
The delivery of the aircraft was originally scheduled for the spring of 2022. Details about what caused the delay in the project weren’t provided.