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The debate was further fuelled by the leak last month of two videos to German news outlets. One showed a German military UAV almost colliding with a passenger jet over Kabul, Afghanistan; the other showed German military personnel fleeing from an out-of-control Heron UAV, also in Afghanistan. The Heron later slammed into a military transport plane sitting on the runway.

The Heron is the same type of drone the Canadian military leased for its Afghanistan operations.

Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) planners examining the proposed purchase of UAVs predicted back in 2011 that flying drones in commercial airspace would become an issue, but noted they didn’t have to worry.

The RCAF doesn’t need approval from Transport Canada or Nav Canada to fly the aircraft domestically, according to the documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through the access-to-information law.

The RCAF pointed out that the Canadian situation is very different from Europe and the U.S., where civilian agencies set the rules. The air force concluded that it saw no significant risks to routine operation of UAVs in Canada.

But the briefing note also added that “in the domestic environment in both high-use and uncongested airspace regions the employment of military unmanned aircraft will provide greater challenges.”

The Conservative government wants to purchase a fleet of up to 18 medium-altitude UAVs for the RCAF. No specific costs have been released but the project’s price tag is estimated to be over $1.5 billion.