On 3 June 1967, Hellyer flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate an unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The town had built it as its Canadian Centennial celebration project, and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare. The sign beside the pad reads:
"The area under the World's First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.Throughout his life, Hellyer has been opposed to the weaponization of space. He supports the Space Preservation Treaty to ban space weapons.[citation needed]
In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in the existence of UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC's Peter Jennings' UFO special in February 2005.[citation needed]
Watching Jennings' UFO special prompted Hellyer to read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso's book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired U.S. Air Force general, who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an "Intergalactic War". The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:
"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning...The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."Hellyer told the audience that in December 2004, he had enjoyed reading and had endorsed a book by Alfred Webre entitled Politics, Government and Law in the Universe. He ended his 30-minute talk by stating:
"To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation the author is proposing a “Decade of Contact” – an “era of openness, public hearings, publicly funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality”."[citation needed]In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:
"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation...that could be a way to save our planet...We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough."In 2010, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens. According to Hawking, if human beings tried to contact aliens, they could invade us and take away our most important resources. Hawking had also said that though most extraterrestrial life could be only in the form of small animals, there could also be "nomads, looking to conquer and colonize" other planets. Hellyer told the Canadian Press that
"the reality is that they (aliens) have been visiting earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge."Blaming Hawking for scaring mankind about aliens, he said, "He (Hawking) is indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature."
Paul Hellyer spoke at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure (the non-governmental hearings chaired by six former U.S. congressmen and aimed at, according to the event's website, doing "what the U.S. Congress had failed to do for forty-five years"), which was held on 29 April – 3 May 2013 in Washington, DC, and testified that "aliens are living among us and that it is likely at least two of them are working with the U.S. government". He asserted a number of things, such as:
- that "at least four species" of alien have been visiting Earth for "thousands of years";
- that these species "may have different agendas";
- that "there are live ETs on Earth at this present time, and at least two of them are working with the United States government". (wiki)
