EBF Group: who is owed what, and out of which loan

The EBF Group Ltd. does not make anything. It lends, and what it owns is other people's obligations — a book the Monitor divides into a performing portfolio, which is being refinanced or collected, and a non-performing one, which is being pursued. The non-performing side has names rather than numbers in the Monitor's report: Project X, the Rumble entities, JNR Farms, BMI, Tall City, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, Table of Contents and paras. 7(b)–(c).

When a lender becomes insolvent, the interesting dispute is rarely with the borrowers. It is among the people who funded the lending, because each of them may have advanced against a different part of the book — and until somebody decides which creditor is entitled to which loan, and in what order, nothing can be paid out to anyone.

That is the question the Court took in hand on July 23.

The direction that produced it

EBF obtained its initial order on May 13, 2026, which appointed MNP Ltd. as monitor, granted an administration charge capped at $100,000 and a directors' charge capped at $25,000, and stayed proceedings until May 22 in favour of the company, its directors and officers, and Frederick J. Paatz. It also required the Monitor to consult the company and the secured creditors about the scope of its own mandate, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, paras. 1–2.

Nine days later the amended and restated order extended the stay to July 23, approved a key employee retention program, widened the Monitor's authority over dispositions, recovery actions and refinancings, and imposed a reporting rhythm on it — weekly variance reporting to the secured creditors, and bi-weekly reporting on material developments including the status of both portfolios and every effort to sell or refinance. Its final direction is the one that matters here: the Monitor was to consult the company and the secured creditors and then report back with recommendations for a process to address priority and entitlement among those creditors in respect of the property, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 6.

The Monitor built that process and brought it forward in its second report. Justice Steele approved it on July 23, 2026, per Entitlement Claims Process Order, July 23, 2026.

The Monitor goes first

The order inverts the usual claims-process shape. Ordinarily creditors file and an officer adjudicates. Here the officer files first.

By no later than August 7, 2026 the Monitor must commence its entitlement motion by filing and circulating to the service list an Entitlement Report, a proposed Entitlement Order and its motion materials. The report is to set out a complete list of all entitlement claims, the property each claim can be asserted against, and the priority of each claim to that property — together with the Monitor's conclusions and the legal and factual basis for them, arrived at on the advice of counsel, per Entitlement Claims Process Order, July 23, 2026, paras. 1(k), 7 and Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 85.

A secured creditor that disagrees then has until 5:00 p.m. Toronto time on September 4, 2026 — the entitlement claims dispute deadline — to deliver a notice of dispute. It is not a bare objection: the notice must reference the specific component of the report in dispute, identify the specific claim and priority issues for determination, set out the detailed legal basis, support it with affidavit evidence, and attach the creditor's own proposed Entitlement Order blacklined against the Monitor's, per Entitlement Claims Process Order, July 23, 2026, paras. 1(h), 1(m) and Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 87.

Miss it and the question is closed. A secured creditor that does not deliver a notice by the deadline is taken to accept the findings in the Entitlement Report, and its rights to dispute them are barred and extinguished, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 87.

The rest of the calendar

Responses from any responding secured creditor are due by 5:00 p.m. on September 18, 2026, again on affidavit evidence with the legal basis set out. Cross-examinations, if there are any, are to be completed by September 25. Facta follow in sequence — disputing creditors by October 19, responding creditors by October 26, replies by October 30 — and the whole thing is to be argued at a full-day hearing in the week of November 2, or on November 12 or 13, subject to the Court's availability, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, paras. 85, 88–89.

The Monitor is entitled to take part in adjudicating the disputes it has framed, but it is not obliged to, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 90.

The point of the exercise is stated without ornament: settling relative priorities is what will let the company seek interim distributions at a later date, subject to allocation being resolved. The Monitor's view is that the structure is fair, efficient and proportionate, and that it avoids litigation in the cases where its conclusions are simply accepted, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, paras. 91–92.

Stay, and the forecast underneath it

The same day, Justice Steele extended the stay period to and including November 30, 2026, approved the Monitor's reports and activities, and approved the fees and disbursements of the Monitor and its counsel, per Ancillary Relief Order (Stay Extension, Activities, Fees), July 23, 2026, paras. 3–5.

The company's stated reasons for wanting until the end of November were three: time to wind down or refinance the performing portfolio in an orderly way, time to administer the entitlement process, and — the candid one — to avoid piecemeal enforcement by the secured creditors, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 94.

The revised cash-flow forecast filed with the report runs twenty weeks, to November 29, 2026, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, para. 7(e). The stay expires the day after the forecast does, and the entitlement motion is to be argued in the fortnight before both.

What it costs to answer the question

For the period April 23 to July 10, 2026 the Monitor's accounts came to $339,492 in fees, $2,861.00 in expenses and disbursements and $44,505.92 in HST — $386,859.12 in all. Its counsel, Thornton Grout Finnigan LLP, filed its own fee affidavit covering April 23 to July 12, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, paras. 97–100.

There is a small administrative fact in that section which belongs to the entitlement question rather than to the billing. From around May 18, 2026 the Monitor and its counsel began allocating their time across detailed charge codes, so that fees and disbursements could later be attributed to particular parts of the estate. General matters — the work that cannot be attributed to any one portfolio — carries the largest single line in that allocation, $107,270.00 in fees and $121,223.10 with tax, against a total of $159,470.00 and $180,209.11. One caution on reading it: the report prints the same allocation table twice, once under the paragraph introducing the Monitor’s allocation and again under its counsel’s, and the total of that table matches counsel’s accounts ($159,470.00 in fees) rather than the Monitor’s ($339,492). The figures below the heading are therefore counsel’s on the report’s own arithmetic, per Second Report of the Monitor, July 17, 2026, paras. 101, 103–104.

If different creditors are entitled to different loans, the cost of working out which is which has to be divided too. The charge codes started five days after the filing; the answer they are building toward is due on August 7.