The building is twelve storeys on Wellington Street West in Ottawa — "1451 Wellington – The Residences at Island Park Drive", originally ninety-three residential units over ground-floor retail, on land assembled from two properties. Construction started in 2015 and was meant to finish in November 2023, per Eighth Report to the Court, June 16, 2026, paras. 10, 12.
It is now expected to register in October 2026, and the company is asking for its stay to run to November 1 and its debtor-in-possession facility to grow to $54.5 million, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, paras. 5(c), 6(e).
The deposits
Since 2017, WellingtonCo has pre-sold approximately 72 of the 93 units — 77% of the building — some of them from the 2017–18 pre-sale marketing campaign.
The deposits from those pre-sales, approximately $14.8 million, are insured by Westmount Guarantee Services Inc. and have been released to WellingtonCo, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 13.
That sentence is the whole of the difficulty. Deposit insurance is what allows deposits to be released to a developer rather than held; released deposits fund construction; and a purchaser who has waited nine years and wants out is asking for money that is already in the walls.
The company obtained the tool to deal with that side of it in July 2025, when the court amended the amended and restated initial order to let WellingtonCo — with the DIP lender's prior written consent — amend, terminate or disclaim pre-sale agreements under s. 32 of the CCAA, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 3(e).
Disclaiming a purchase agreement releases the developer. It does not, by itself, get the purchaser's money back to the purchaser.
Six months of the court pressing
The sequence between January and April is worth setting out in order, because it is a court steadily narrowing an issue the parties were not resolving.
January 9, 2026 — the court issued an endorsement requesting a report on how and when deposit funds would be released to purchasers seeking to terminate their pre-sale agreements, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 4(a).
February 3 — WellingtonCo served and filed its response, reviewed by the monitor, the DIP lender and their counsel.
March 4 — the stay was extended to June 30, 2026.
March 6 — WellingtonCo withdrew its motion to approve the deposit return protocol, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 4(b).
March 6, the same day — the court issued an endorsement directing Adam Slavens, counsel to Tarion Warranty Corporation, to provide a draft order by March 13 addressing the return of deposit money and combining the processes involving Tarion and Aviva into a one-step process, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 4(c).
That is the paragraph a practitioner should notice. The applicant withdrew the motion, and the court did not simply wait for a better one — it turned to the warranty provider, a party with no obligation to bring the motion and every institutional reason to want the process to work, and told its counsel to produce the draft.
The draft went out to all parties, was amended in response to feedback, and the Deposit Return Protocol Order was approved on March 30, 2026, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 4(c).
April 1 — a further endorsement directed the monitor to work with the company to obtain a full list of purchasers, with contact details, so they could be told about it. The monitor wrote to all purchasers on April 7, 2026, per Eighth Report, June 16, 2026, para. 4(d).
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