Canada: Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand confirms NORAD shot down "high-altitude object" over Canadian airspace (Full Remarks)

Defence Minister Anita Anand provided an update after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said an "unidentified object" that violated Canadian airspace on Saturday has been shot down over the Yukon. The confirmation came just a few hours after officials with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirmed an exclusive Global News report Saturday that a “high-altitude airborne object” has been detected over northern Canada.
“To our knowledge, this is the first instance of NORAD downing an object in Canadian airspace, and the importance of this moment should not be underestimated. We detected this object together and we defeated this together,” Anand said. She added that more analysis was being conducted to gather more information about the object.
Anand said that the object was shot down at approximately 3:41 p.m. EST and that it was shot down over central Yukon at approximately 40,000 feet. Anand described the object as “cylindrical in shape” and said the item was smaller in size than a "potentially similar" object that was shot down off the coast of North Carolina recently. Anand added that the object was being recovered for further investigation.
The news comes just a day after United States Air Force Brigadier Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed on Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden ordered fighter aircraft assigned to United States Northern Command (NORCOM) to engage and destroy a "high-altitude airborne object" in U.S. airspace over Alaska on Friday afternoon.