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.
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