Project Magnet was formed in December 1950 on the authorization of Commander C.P. Edwards, then Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Service, with the aim of investigating UFO claims in Canada. Project Magnet’s primary goal was to study how the Earth’s magnetic field could be harnessed as a propulsion system for vehicles, a technology Smith believed extraterrestrials used.
At the time, 50 per cent of Canadians believed “that these mysterious disks are not just imagination and that they are not just a natural phenomenon,” according to a poll conducted by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion.