Jefferson Properties: the lender buys the lawsuits

On March 28, 2025, the City of Richmond Hill issued occupancy permits for the stacked units of Richmond Hill Grace, the 96-unit townhome project at 39, 53 and 67 Jefferson Side Road, and the receiver building it delivered them to the buyers who had signed for those units in 2021. The buyers did not move in. Their position, through counsel, was that the units were or would be unsafe to occupy and that the developer had defaulted; the receiver's was that it had done what the agreements required and they had not, per the Twelfth Report of the Receiver, Sept. 9, 2026, App. C (Notice of Arbitration), paras. 18–23. That dispute has been in arbitration since October 2025. On September 17, 2026, the court approved the receiver's sale of it.

The buyer was Cameron Stephens Mortgage Capital Ltd., the senior secured lender whose application put Albert Gelman Inc. in charge of 2011836 Ontario Corp. and Jefferson Properties Limited Partnership in December 2023. In the same sitting Justice J. Dietrich approved a second assignment to the same lender: two lawsuits the receiver had issued in March against the trades and managers it blames for the project's roofing and exterior cladding. Neither price is to be paid in cash; each is to be satisfied by forgiving debt the receivership owes Cameron Stephens under the Receiver's Borrowing Charge, per the Endorsement of Justice J. Dietrich, Sept. 17, 2026, paras. 1–4, 11, 13.

In June the receiver was pressing a motion to have the debtors' principal, Fanseay Wang, declared a vexatious litigant, per the Factum of the Receiver (Vexatious Litigant Motion), June 26, 2026, paras. 1–3, while closing units one approval and vesting order at a time, nine of them on July 3 alone, among them the Approval and Vesting Order (Freehold Unit 12), July 3, 2026. The September motion concerns the rest of the estate: the claims the receivership holds against the people who were supposed to buy the units and the companies that were supposed to build them.

Twelve units and an arbitration

The 2021 agreements of purchase and sale, substantially identical apart from the buyer, the price and some extras, provided for two closings: an occupancy closing on or before March 28, 2025, at which the buyer would move in and start paying occupancy fees, and a later title closing on a date the developer would set, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, paras. 6–8. The receiver chose to finish the project and perform the agreements. It says it substantially completed the units by the outside date and was "ready, willing and able" to give occupancy, and that the buyers breached by neither taking possession nor paying occupancy fees. The buyers, the report says, have generally taken the position that the debtors defaulted "by failing to substantially complete the Contracted Units in a safe and habitable manner" and have purported to terminate, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, paras. 9–15.

The receiver terminated the agreements in August 2025 and served a notice of arbitration on October 1, 2025. It asks for declarations that the buyers defaulted and forfeited their deposits, occupancy fees, and a measure of damages it proposed in advance: the difference between each contract price and whatever the receiver eventually sells the unit for. "There can be no better measure of the current value of the respective Contracted Unit than the price that such Contracted Unit is actually sold for," the notice says, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. C (Notice of Arbitration), paras. 1, 26–33. The notice named the buyers of fourteen stacked units. The receiver has since resolved its dispute with one purchaser, and the schedule to the assignment agreement lists twelve units, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, para. 19 and App. F, Schedule "A".

By court order of February 23, 2026, the Honourable Russell Juriansz was appointed sole arbitrator, with the claims to be heard on a consolidated basis and the buyers' substantive rights and defences left unaffected, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. D, paras. 2–3, 7. His first procedural order, dated June 12, 2026, put the arbitration under the ADRIC rules, directed that the claimant pay all its costs including the arbitrator's fees, and limited the first phase to liability, with damages deferred "to a later stage, if necessary." A second, dated August 18, 2026 and made at the request of the receiver's counsel and counsel to several respondents, moved the timetable back two months: the claimant's consolidated record due October 28, 2026, cross-examinations finished by January 30, 2027, and a case conference in early February 2027 on the shape of the liability hearing, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. E (Procedural Orders #1 and #2).

What Cameron Stephens has bought is the receiver's and the debtors' interest in the arbitration, the agreements, the claims against those buyers and the deposits they paid, which are held in trust by Loopstra Nixon LLP, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, para. 21 and App. F, recitals. The price is the receiver's own estimate of the damages the buyers' failure to close caused the estate. It is blank in the public copy of the agreement; the calculation sits in Confidential Appendix 2 to the Twelfth Report, which the court sealed, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, paras. 21–23 and App. F, s. 2.

Two lawsuits against the trades

The second package is priced in the open. In November 2024 the receiver hired Ararat EIFS Wall Systems Inc. to finish the project's exterior insulation and finish system under a contract of $180,743.00 plus HST. In its statement of claim of March 25, 2026, the receiver alleges that Ararat's workers came to site without documentation and without safety footwear or harnesses, that it missed its January 24, 2025 deadline on Block H, delivered materials in an open-top pickup in about −11°C weather, and did work on Blocks G and I that the product's manufacturer, after testing a sample, said required complete replacement of the affected area. The receiver says it terminated Ararat in May 2025, paid a replacement contractor $349,982.46 to redo Blocks G and I, and suffered about six months of cumulative delay. It claims $1,718,815.33, of which approximately $1,170,841.54 is extended overhead, insurance, taxes and construction-loan interest attributed to the delay, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. G (EIFS Claim), paras. 1, 12–33, 43.

The roofing claim reaches back before the receivership. Issued March 24, 2026, it names 2035755 Ontario Ltd., carrying on business as Dillon Bros. Roofing, the roofer engaged by the debtors in 2023 on a contract of $825,000.00 plus HST; Core Constructors Ltd., the construction manager whose contract the receiver declined to renew in January 2024; and EDG COR Inc., the director of construction. The receiver alleges roof ponding and membrane and flashing defects that a Tarion field reviewer flagged repeatedly from March 2023 onward and that went unrepaired, and claims $1,626,284.15, jointly and severally, for a replacement roofer's contract of $519,800.00, balcony and window work, approximately $417,000 in delay overhead and approximately $498,000 in added financing and interest, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. H (Roofing Claim), paras. 1, 6, 18–36, 49. None of these allegations has been tried.

A fourth defendant has already left. The roofing claim also named DC & F Development Corp., the project's consultant under a 2022 contract. On June 1, 2026, DC & F's counsel wrote that the claim "ought never to have been commenced," enclosing minutes of settlement and a mutual full and final release that the debtors had signed with DC & F in September 2023, and threatened a motion to dismiss with substantial indemnity costs, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, App. I. The receiver says it had not known of the release until then, and discontinued against DC & F by notice dated July 20, 2026, per the Twelfth Report, Sept. 9, 2026, paras. 32–33 and App. J.