Does a United Nations plane sighted at the North Bay Airport in Ontario have a role in bringing a U.N. police force to Ottawa? No, the claim presented in this video is not based in fact: There is a plane with U.N. markings at the North Bay airport. Voyageur Airways, which owns the airplane, has a maintenance facility in North Bay that employs over 200 people. According to airway communications management, the plane has been at the North Bay Airport facility for several weeks for a routine maintenance heavy check.
Images showing the plane with United Nations markings began to surface on February 19, 2022. One video originally posted on TikTok (and then retracted) continues to circulate on Twitter. Another example, a video shot after the sun went down, was posted on YouTube and also on Facebook on February 20, 2022, by "Truckers for Freedom 2022." It was captioned:
A United Nations Plane Has Been Reported to Be Parked in North Bay, Ontario, Canada
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Feb 21 16:58:14 2022 UTC)
The narrator of this video says:
I seen a video online and I thought I'd come check it out for myself and here we go -- United Nations plane right here in North Bay. I wonder where all those cops in Ottawa came from? And there is no snow on it, it just snowed last night.
Another video posted on Twitter (archived here) on February 20, 2022, has narration that says:
Well we're at the North Bay CFAB Airport. The United Nations are officially in Ontario. The police in Ottawa are United Nations police officers. Canadian Police are standing down and United Nations are taking over our country.
Lead Stories reached out to Voyageur Aviation, a subsidiary of Chorus Aviation Inc., to inquire about the plane in the video. Manon Stuart, the manager of corporate communications at Chorus Aviation Inc., responded by email on February 21, 2022:
I can confirm that the aircraft has been in North Bay for several weeks for a routine aircraft maintenance heavy check at our Voyageur North Bay facility. Voyageur employs approximately 220 people in North Bay, providing aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul services for a global customer base.
This is not the first time that rumors have been spawned by the sighting of a U.N. airplane in North Bay. On December 5, 2018, factcheck.afp.com published a fact check titled, "A UN-sponsored migrant 'invasion' in Ontario? No, just routine plane maintenance." This article addressed rumors that the media was hiding an "invasion" after a U.N.-marked airplane was sighted in North Bay on November 28, 2018.
