Excalibur Mechanical: the Wheatland job the receiver left unfinished

Excalibur Mechanical Ltd. had one project under way when its interim receiver arrived. The Sherwood Park company, established in 2012, provides water, sewer, gas and related infrastructure services across Western Canada, per the Receiver's First Report, June 29, 2026, para. 4. The project was a contract with Wheatland County, south of Calgary, valued at $7,257,404.82, and in January management told Ernst & Young Inc., then the interim receiver, that the work was 67% complete and would be materially complete by the end of the month, with a holdback release of $697,486.58 to follow in March, per the Interim Receiver's First Report, Jan. 8, 2026, paras. 35–37.

After becoming receiver on March 26 and talking with the county and others, EY understood by the end of June that about $360,000 of work remained; that no certificate of substantial completion had issued, and the county had a deficiency list of about $148,638.28; that about $923,000 was owing to Excalibur's vendors and subcontractors, a number of whom had filed notices of claim with the surety, Aviva Insurance Company of Canada, under the labour and material payment bond and the performance bond; and that the county would make no further payments until the outstanding amounts were addressed and a path forward agreed. The holdback stood at $659,265.72, about $38,000 less than previously reported, per the Receiver's First Report, June 29, 2026, paras. 24–25.

In the receiver's cost-benefit table, inflows were the holdback and $360,000 of expected contract funds, $1,019,265.72 in all. Outflows were $923,207.82 of lienable payables, $288,000 to complete the contract (estimated at 80% of the expected funds) and the $148,638.28 deficiency list, $1,359,846.10 in all, which left a deficiency of $340,580.38. On April 1, 2026, the receiver told the county it would not complete the remaining work. The report says "it was more likely that completing the Wheatland Project would have further eroded the value of Excalibur's estate," and that the notices of claim filed with the bonding company exceed the holdback available to satisfy them, per the Receiver's First Report, June 29, 2026, paras. 26–28.

A bank, a scam and a counterclaim

Under a commitment letter of November 19, 2024, ATB Financial established a $300,000 demand revolving line, HASCAP term loans of $185,112.57 and $574,436.78 and a $50,000 Mastercard, secured by a 2019 general security agreement and by a guarantee from Deseree Spooner and Bradley Spooner, the company's only directors and shareholders, limited to $329,600 plus interest after demand and enforcement costs. ATB's affiant, Ashton Boisselle, deposes that around May 2025 Excalibur stopped making deposits at ATB and moved its banking to Royal Bank of Canada, then missed a line-of-credit interest payment on May 31 and stopped its HASCAP payments; ATB demanded payment and issued notice under s. 244 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act on June 20, 2025. The debt was $1,243,290.21 at December 2, 2025, per the Affidavit of Ashton Boisselle, Dec. 3, 2025, paras. 8–9, 12, 17, 20, 29–30, 33, and $1,452,280.66 at March 13, 2026, per the Third Affidavit of Ashton Boisselle, Mar. 16, 2026, para. 9.

The company's account of that spring is in an affidavit sworn December 8, 2025 by Ms. Spooner, Excalibur's office manager and controller. In February 2024, she deposes, Alberta Central East Water Corporation paid Excalibur $405,326.20 twice by mistake, and in March 2025 it raised the duplicate payment; she promised to repay it. On March 27 she was contacted by someone she believed was with the water corporation, asking whether she could make a payment. Payments of $75,000 on April 11 and $125,000 on April 14 followed, and a further $110,000 on May 9. The scam was discovered on June 5, 2025, and she took the documents to the police and to ATB, per the Affidavit of Deseree Spooner, Dec. 8, 2025, paras. 2, 17–24.

Excalibur counterclaimed on September 3, 2025, alleging that ATB's negligence facilitated the fraud; Ms. Spooner deposes that she was not alerted to a mismatch between the account number and the account name until well after the transfers, per the Affidavit of Deseree Spooner, Dec. 8, 2025, paras. 29, 31. ATB says its fraud and risk management group found "no ATB System Failures nor Team Member errors that resulted in the Fraudulent Transfers," per the Affidavit of Ashton Boisselle, Dec. 3, 2025, para. 28, and that Excalibur had breached its debt service coverage covenant by January 31, 2024, "well before the Fraudulent Transfers, which took place in April 2025," per the Third Affidavit of Ashton Boisselle, Mar. 16, 2026, para. 17.

Ms. Spooner's affidavit also says Excalibur was solvent. Its contract work generally carries high costs at the outset, with payment on completion, and equipment held for a spring auction would sell for a substantially higher price, since sales are traditionally 30 to 40 percent higher heading into the summer construction season, per the Affidavit of Deseree Spooner, Dec. 8, 2025, paras. 7, 10–11, 16. On December 12, 2025, Justice L.K. Harris appointed EY interim receiver under s. 47(1) of the BIA. The order empowered it to monitor the company's receipts and disbursements, said it would not operate the business absent a further order, and carved ATB's action and the counterclaim out of the stay, per the Interim Receivership Order, Dec. 12, 2025, paras. 2, 4–5, 10–11; ATB's applications for a receiver and for summary judgment were adjourned, per the Adjournment Order, Dec. 12, 2025, para. 1. On January 9, 2026, Justice C.D. Simard extended the interim receivership to March 31, directed Excalibur's banks and the CRA to give EY read-only access to its accounts, ordered the Spooners to produce records and raised the interim receiver's charge to $100,000, per the Order Extending Appointment of Interim Receiver, Jan. 9, 2026, paras. 2–4, 6, 8.

Three months of monitoring

The interim receiver's Second Report of March 23, 2026 put the CRA source deduction balance at $1,051,991.80 at January 30, including interest and penalties, under a $100,000-a-month payment arrangement with which Excalibur "may not be fully current." Excalibur planned to cut from three drilling crews to one and sell the surplus equipment through Ritchie Bros. in May, to make a material payment to ATB. EY suggested proposals from multiple auctioneers; Excalibur said it had already begun moving equipment onto the Ritchie Bros. site. The report flagged a risk that the proceeds "could be applied in a manner that may affect/prejudice the priority entitlements of secured creditors," among them the CRA and ATB. Excalibur said it had not pursued new general contracting projects while the interim receivership was in place, citing uncertainty about its finances and banking and the requirement to disclose the interim receivership in its bids, per the Interim Receiver's Second Report, Mar. 23, 2026, paras. 9, 34, 36–37, 50–53, 66.

ATB's affiant, in an affidavit sworn March 16 for its application for a receiver, listed among his concerns that Excalibur was paying creditors other than ATB, including unsecured creditors, out of its receivables, proposed to auction equipment without appropriate controls over the proceeds, and continued to incur debt that might rank ahead of ATB, per the Third Affidavit of Ashton Boisselle, Mar. 16, 2026, paras. 5, 31.

On March 23, Excalibur's counsel, Cooper Regel LLP, wrote that the interim receiver's actions had caused "serious detriment to our client's ability to carry on in the ordinary course of business." The letter said the interim receiver had told RBC of the appointment, leaving the company's account frozen until January 16, 2026; that, according to the company, a general contractor had heard from the receiver that a full receivership would be in place that week, and negotiations ended; and that the interim receiver had misrepresented its mandate to Ritchie Bros., reducing what the company could expect from the auction. EY's counsel, MLT Aikins LLP, answered on March 25 that RBC had acted on its own initiative, that EY contacted Ritchie Bros. only after ATB's application had been filed and posted publicly, and that it had not been in contact with any general contractor. "Any harm experienced by Excalibur in the circumstances as described in your letter, is likely a result of the Interim Receivership Order being granted," the reply says, per the Supplement to the Interim Receiver's Second Report, Mar. 25, 2026, paras. 5–7, Scheds. "A", "B".