Nunavut Iron Ore, Inc., Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation and 12334992 Canada Inc. obtained an initial order on May 15, 2026, with FTI Consulting Canada Inc. as monitor and a stay running ten days, per Supplement to the Second Report of the Monitor, June 9, 2026, para. 1.
Four weeks later the debtors still had no approved debtor-in-possession financing, three proposals on the table, and a cross-motion asking the court to make them borrow from someone other than their chosen lender.
They also had a mine north of the Arctic Circle and a shipping season that opens once a year.
The stay, in ten-day increments
The pace of this file tells you how contested it is. The initial order ran the stay to May 25. The amended and restated initial order of May 25 took it to June 5, raising both the administration charge and the D&O charge. The order of June 5 took it to June 10, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, paras. 1–2, 6.
Three stay periods in three weeks, none longer than eleven days. A stay extended in that rhythm is a stay being used to hold the ring while something is negotiated, not to give a company breathing room.
Three DIPs
The monitor filed its second report on June 4 for a hearing at which the applicants intended to seek approval of their DIP financing agreement.
The same day, the senior secured lenders brought a joint cross-motion seeking, among other things, an order adjourning that hearing and setting a litigation schedule — and authorising the debtors to enter into the Final DIP Proposal of the Ad Hoc DIP Group instead, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, paras. 3–4.
That is a materially different thing from opposing a DIP. Objecting to interim financing is routine; asking the court to direct that the debtor take a competing facility puts the choice of lender, not merely its terms, in issue.
Both motions were adjourned to June 10 on Agreed Terms of Adjournment negotiated among the company, the senior secured lenders, the DIP lender and the Energy and Minerals Group, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, paras. 5, 9.
At the June 5 hearing, the court requested — and the monitor undertook to provide — a side-by-side comparison of all three: the DIP financing agreement, the final DIP proposal from the DIP lender, and the final DIP proposal from the Ad Hoc DIP Group, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, paras. 8(b), 11.
A judge asking the court officer for a comparison chart is a small procedural moment worth noticing. Where competing facilities are pressed by parties with adverse economic interests, each side's characterisation of the other's terms is advocacy. The neutral comparison is the monitor's to make.
The monitor's one substantive view
The supplement is mostly procedural. It contains a single paragraph of opinion, and that paragraph is about geography.
The senior secured lenders' materials referred to a potential "stand alone" DIP facility, separate from the Ad Hoc DIP Group's proposal. Based on its observations of the debtors' dealings with employees, suppliers and other key stakeholders, the monitor's view is that a stand-alone facility "will not provide the stability and certainty needed for the Debtors to procure crucial supplies and transport them to Baffin Island during the upcoming Sealift Season", per Supplement, June 9, 2026, para. 10.
For a mine on Baffin Island, the sealift is not a logistics preference. It is the annual ice-free window in which everything the site cannot fly in — fuel, equipment, consumables, a year of supply — arrives by ship. What is not ordered and loaded in time does not arrive late; it arrives next year.
That is the constraint the DIP fight is running against, and it is why the parties cannot simply litigate at a comfortable pace. Suppliers make commitments now, or the season is lost.
The charge that stands in for a DIP
The June 5 order is the interesting document, because it solves the problem that the DIP dispute created.
Inserted into the ARIO is a new provision granting a Sealift Supplier Charge: a temporary charge on the property, in favour of counterparties to contracts specified by the debtors for the supply of goods or services, in an aggregate amount not exceeding US$100 million, per Order (Stay Extension and ARIO Amendment), June 5, 2026, para. 4.
Three features make it work.
It attaches supplier by supplier, on the monitor's certificate. The charge arises for a given counterparty upon the issuance of a certificate by the monitor specifying that creditor's particulars and amount. A supplier is not asked to rely on a general assurance; it receives a document.
It only secures new orders inside the budget. It covers payment for goods and services ordered on or after the date of the order, and only where the obligation is incurred in accordance with the June forecast. It buys nothing for anyone's pre-filing exposure.
It ranks third but is by far the largest. The order re-set the priorities: first the administration charge at a maximum of US$5 million, second the D&O charge at US$20.4 million, and third the Sealift Supplier Charge at US$100 million, per Order (Stay Extension and ARIO Amendment), June 5, 2026, para. 5.
And then the provision that makes it a bridge rather than a fixture:
THIS COURT ORDERS that, upon the granting of a further Order of this Court approving any interim bridge financing or debtor-in-possession financing in this proceeding, the Sealift Supplier Charge shall be released and terminated automatically without any further action.
Per Order (Stay Extension and ARIO Amendment), June 5, 2026, para. 4.
The charge exists precisely and only for the period in which there is no DIP. It requires no motion to remove, no discharge, no further attendance — it dissolves on the granting of any interim financing order, whichever facility wins.
Nobody opposed it, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, para. 6. That is unsurprising: a supplier charge capped at the forecast, junior to the professional and director charges, and self-terminating on the event every party is fighting to bring about, costs the contending lenders almost nothing while keeping the mine supplied through the argument.
It is a good template for any seasonal or time-critical debtor whose interim financing is genuinely in dispute. The usual choices are to approve a contested DIP under time pressure or to let operations degrade while the fight runs. This is a third option: charge the estate for the operational spend that cannot wait, cap it at the budget, and let it evaporate when the real facility arrives.
What the parties did with the adjournment
The Agreed Terms of Adjournment were not, on the monitor's account, entirely observed.
On June 6, counsel to Oaktree Capital Management, LP and Hartree Partners, LP, on behalf of the senior secured lenders, wrote to the monitor and to the debtors' counsel requesting information. The monitor notes, carefully, that written requests of the monitor were not contemplated by the Agreed Terms of Adjournment, and that some of the questions were not answerable by the deadline the letter set. It answered what it could on June 8, in consultation with the company, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, paras. 12–13.
The substantive step the adjournment was for is a litigation timetable. The terms require the company and the senior secured lenders, in consultation with the monitor, to agree one before June 10 for a de novo hearing on the appropriate DIP financing — failing which the court imposes one, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, para. 14.
De novo is the operative word. The DIP question is not being reviewed on the applicants' record; it is being reheard from the start, with competing proposals in evidence.
The monitor reported constructive discussions and said it was hopeful of agreement before the June 10 hearing, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, para. 15.
Who is watching
The participant list from the June 5 hearing is a reminder that this is not only a creditors' fight.
Alongside the Ad Hoc Committee of Senior Noteholders, Export Development Canada and CIBC are two constituencies with no interest in which fund wins: Qikiqtaaluk Corporation and Qikiqtaaluk Industry Ltd., the Inuit-owned business entities of the Baffin region, and the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 793, per Supplement, June 9, 2026, Appendix "B".
The docket records a further stay extension on June 10 and a Second Amended and Restated Initial Order on June 11, per Order (Stay Extension), June 10, 2026 and Second Amended and Restated Initial Order, June 11, 2026.
Whether the sealift charge has already done its work — and dissolved — is the thing to look for next.
Every fact above names the filing it was read from.
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