“Recovery teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyse the object,” Trudeau told reporters before departing for a previously scheduled fund-raising event in Yukon.

Trudeau’s comments came as US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told broadcaster ABC that US officials believe the object destroyed over Canada on Saturday – as well as another flying object shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska on Friday – were both balloons.

He offered few other details, saying only that the objects were much smaller than the first balloon that drifted over US airspace and was shot down over South Carolina last Saturday.

Schumer said American officials were “focused like a laser” on figuring out what the objects were and what if any threat they posed.

“You can be sure that if any American interests or people are at risk, they’ll take appropriate action.”

Republican lawmaker Mike Turner, who serves on the US House Armed Services Committee, suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration might be overcompensating for what he described as its previously lax monitoring of American airspace.

“They do appear somewhat trigger-happy,” Turner told CNN today.

“I would prefer them to be trigger happy than to be permissive.”