[citation needed] Hellyer returned to parliament in a 1958 by-election in the neighbouring riding of Trinity, and became an opposition critic of John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government.

[5] When the Liberals returned to power in the 1963 election, Hellyer became Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Lester B. Pearson.

In 1969, Hellyer issued a major report on housing and urban renewal in which he advocated incremental reforms rather than new government programs.

He called for greater flexibility in Canada's mortgage loan system and encouraged corporate pension funds to invest more money in housing programs.

Some provincial and municipal governments were openly skeptical,[8] and Heward Grafftey, a left-leaning Progressive Conservative (PC) with an interest in housing, called for a more radical approach.

His views were too right wing for most delegates, and he alienated many PCs with a speech attacking Red Tories as not being "true conservatives".

[citation needed] On June 3, 1967, Hellyer inaugurated an unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta.

The pad was built as the town's Canadian Centennial celebration project and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare.

On September 25, 2005, he was a guest 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.

[citation needed] The Ottawa Citizen reported in 2007 that Hellyer was demanding world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change.

[17] In an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) in 2014, Hellyer said that at least four species of aliens had been visiting Earth for thousands of years, with most of them coming from other star systems, although there are some living on Venus, Mars and "Saturn's moon".