Were the Phoenix lights the Canadian Snowbirds?

My dad is a former Canadian Air Force pilot and he claims that the famous Phoenix lights were just the Canadian Snowbirds aerobatics team. He says he knows one of the guys who claims he was flying in the formation that night, and for whatever reason they had their landing lights on only and not their green/red navigation lights. For some reason this explanation was never picked up by the media and people ran with the UFO theory instead. Has anyone ever heard this explanation? For this reason he scoffs whenever the Phoenix lights story comes up. Personally I’m on the fence about it, because I think people would be able to tell the difference between planes in formation vs a giant craft.