Dosanjh Care: what a secured creditor is not required to wait for

The argument the owner made is one every receiver hears. The property is worth more than the sale price, because a business could be run on it again.

Justice Myers took it seriously enough to answer it in full, and the answer is a short statement of what secured creditors are entitled to.

The motion

The Receiver came to court on July 9, 2026 seeking approval of a sale of the debtor's property; if approved, a distribution to pay priority claims and part of the applicant's secured claim; and then its own discharge with the ancillary approvals that go with it, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 1.

It was opposed. Counsel appeared for the debtor — or, as the endorsement puts it, "actually, the owner of the debtor, as guarantor of the debtor's debt" — and submitted, on a late-breaking client affidavit, that the proposed sale was not value-maximising. The evidence offered was an appraisal from 2022 valuing the going-concern business then operating at the mortgaged property at $3.28 million, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 2 and Responding Motion Record of the Company, July 9, 2026.

Why the appraisal did not answer the question

The Receiver's own appraisal attributed no value to the business formerly operated on the property. The reason is in the history: the business was closed by governmental order for health reasons almost two years before the Receiver was appointed, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 3.

So the two valuations were not really in conflict. One priced a running health care business; the other priced land with a closed building on it. To get from the second to the first, somebody would have to win back a licence, bring a building up to health and safety standards, and then start a business — and Justice Myers identified who was being asked to pay for that: "The debtor is essentially asking the secured creditor to invest in opening a business at the site to try to improve the value of the property."

Then the principle:

"Creditors are not required to make extraordinary investments in property held as secured collateral prior to liquidation."

per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 4.

What makes the reasoning persuasive rather than merely firm is what follows it. Nothing prevented the owner from funding a new business at the site herself. Better still, if she could convince anyone else that the property was grossly undervalued because a business could readily be opened there, she could have bid on the land with their backing. On her own numbers the arithmetic was inviting: "If the business is worth $1.9 million as she postulates, she could have doubled the bids received by the Receiver and bought the land for hundreds of thousands of dollars below her attributed value," per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 4.

An owner who believes the market is wrong by that margin has a remedy, and it is to buy.

What the market said

The marketplace did not agree. Over a listing period of six months, 21 interested parties produced six bids from four people. None exceeded the appraised land value except the one the Receiver accepted. The Receiver took the best offer made, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 5.

Justice Myers found the property had been exposed to the market and marketed sufficiently to attract the best offers available, that the MLS process was fair and conducted with integrity, and that there was no basis to question the Receiver's judgment that the sale should proceed on the agreement it had negotiated, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 10.

The lawsuit nobody had authority to start

The second objection was that the Receiver had terminated litigation purportedly commenced by the debtor against the government over the loss of its licence.

The Receiver's commercial answer was that it saw little likelihood of recovery sufficient to justify spending money continuing it — and that the owner, who wanted it continued, neither offered to fund it nor to buy the cause of action, per Endorsement of Justice Myers, July 9, 2026, para. 6.