The government put airlines on high security alert over the weekend after receiving specific information, says Transport Minister John Baird, who would not disclose the details. (CBC)

Transport Minister John Baird said Tuesday that the government put airlines on high security alert over the weekend on the basis of some specific information it received.

Baird wouldn't discuss the nature of the information but said vigilance is still required even though a few weeks have passed since the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a flight to Detroit.

"This is not anything like 9/11, but obviously information that we've received is a concern that we need to all have heightened vigilance," Baird said. "We don't want panic, but at the same time I think the public would expect us, when we have a reasonable concern, to be open and honest about that concern."

Baird said the federal government does not plan to speed up the rollout of full-body scanners at major Canadian airports. He was in Toronto speaking at a funding announcement at the Royal Ontario Museum.

On Dec. 25, a Nigerian man attempted to set off explosives he had smuggled onboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. The attempt failed and the man was subdued by other passengers. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

At a news conference in Ottawa, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan also would not get into details about the information prompting the high security alert.

"I’ll simply reference that groups like this tend to do events in series, in sequence to get maximum effect," he said.

"We were dealing with kind of a new approach with the technology that was used on Christmas Day that may very well have been, if you will, a kind of pilot project by the organization to see how viable it was. And we have reason to believe that we have to be concerned."