LNS Properties: two price cuts and a redacted offer on Spruce Street

The listing photograph shows a three-storey building on Spruce Street in Vermilion Bay, yellow on its lower two floors and white on the third, with a green Guardian pharmacy sign still on its front, per the brokerage's activity report filed with the First Report of the Receiver, Sept. 14, 2026, App. "D". From October 1, 2023, all 1,200 square feet of it were leased to Vermilion Bay Medical Pharmacy Inc. for a fifteen-year term, at $2,000 a month rising to $3,000 in the last five years, under a lease exhibited to the Affidavit of Christopher Cameron, May 29, 2025, Ex. "D" (Application Record). The landlord, LNS Properties Inc., is a real estate holding company with no employees, and the building is its principal asset, per the Affidavit of Christopher Cameron, May 29, 2025, paras. 4, 7 (Application Record).

On May 11, 2026, the company's court-appointed receiver, MNP Ltd., listed the property on MLS at $199,500. It cut the asking price to $189,500 on July 13 and to $164,500 on August 11, and after further marketing at that price it received the offer it now asks the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to approve. The price in that offer is blacked out of the public copy of the agreement, per the First Report of the Receiver, Sept. 14, 2026, paras. 16, 19–22.

The motion, returnable September 25, asks for more than a vesting order. MNP also wants its report and its conduct approved, its fees and its counsel's approved, the unredacted agreement and the brokerage's marketing update sealed, a distribution authorized, and its own discharge once the sale closes. "NBC will suffer a shortfall after the sale of the Real Property. As a result, there will be no sale proceeds to distribute to any other creditor," the receiver writes, and it proposes to pay National Bank of Canada the full net proceeds, being the purchase price less property taxes, realtor fees and the fees of the receiver and its counsel, per the Factum of the Receiver, Sept. 15, 2026, paras. 2, 22.

A landlord that guaranteed two pharmacies' loans

LNS is in receivership as a guarantor. The loans were made in 2021 and 2023 through CWB Maxium Financial Inc., a subsidiary of Canadian Western Bank, which National Bank acquired in February 2025: an aggregate principal amount of $3,393,653 advanced to two pharmacy businesses, $2,750,900 to a pharmacy professional corporation and $643,753 to Ignace Medical Pharmacy Inc., both ultimately controlled by one of LNS's directors. LNS guaranteed both borrowers without limit and secured the guarantees with two general security agreements and a first-ranking charge on the building, registered on November 20, 2023 in the principal amount of $250,000. Christopher Cameron, a senior advisor in the bank's Special Asset Management Unit, describes the whole as part of "a broader cross-guaranteed and cross-collateralized loan and security package," per his Affidavit of Christopher Cameron, May 29, 2025, paras. 1, 7, 16–22, 24, Exs. "I" and "J" (Application Record).

On March 18, 2025, the bank's counsel demanded $3,326,008.13 from LNS on account of the guarantees, being $2,799,945.07 owed by the professional corporation and $526,063.06 owed by Ignace as at March 17, and served notices of intention to enforce security under s. 244 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, per the demand letters exhibited to the Affidavit of Christopher Cameron, May 29, 2025, Ex. "J" (Application Record). None of the recipients responded and nothing was paid, the affiant says (Cameron Affidavit, para. 27).

The bank says the borrowers were in default in part because of a receivership their supplier had started (Cameron Affidavit, para. 25). On April 2, 2025, Justice Stewart appointed MNP receiver of four pharmacy companies, Dryden Pharmacy Inc., Ignace Medical Pharmacy Inc., Fort William Medical Pharmacy Inc. and the Vermilion Bay tenant, on the application of McKesson Canada Corporation, which supplied them under Guardian banner agreements. McKesson's affiant, Tracey Corbeil, swore on February 26, 2025 that the four owed McKesson $3,252,351.15, of which $231,177.22 was owed at Vermilion Bay, and that its pre-authorized debits had been rejected for insufficient funds, per her affidavit in McKesson's own proceeding, exhibited to the Affidavit of Christopher Cameron, May 29, 2025, Exs. "A" and "C" (Affidavit of Tracey Corbeil, Feb. 26, 2025, paras. 3, 10, 22). The bank supported that application, Mr. Cameron says, in part because it contemplated the pharmacies continuing to operate and serve their communities (Cameron Affidavit, paras. 9–11).

Inside that receivership, the tenant stopped paying rent. According to Mr. Cameron, MNP as the pharmacy's receiver was conserving cash, with the result that "the Bank is presently financing the operations of the Vermilion Pharmacy in the amount of the $2,000 per month lease payments otherwise ordinarily due" (Cameron Affidavit, para. 14). The bank's case for a receiver of the building looked to a combined sale: "A consolidated sale process including both the Tenant's pharmacy business and the Debtor's Real Property may maximize value and creditor recoveries," per the Notice of Application, June 2, 2025, para. 9(c) (Application Record, Tab 1).

Justice Stewart heard the application by video conference on August 14, 2025; LNS did not attend, although properly served. "The applicant has proven that the debtor provided unlimited guarantees of indebtedness," the endorsement reads, and because MNP was already receiver of the tenant pharmacy, "it is particularly convenient to have MNP act as the receiver of the real property," per the Endorsement of Justice Stewart, Aug. 14, 2025, paras. 2, 4–5. The order appointed MNP receiver of the building and its proceeds alone, with a Receiver's Charge ranking first and power to borrow up to $200,000, per the Order Appointing Receiver, Aug. 14, 2025, paras. 2, 15, 18.

The pharmacy had to leave first

The receiver's First Report, dated September 14, 2026 and signed by Sheldon Title, a senior vice-president of MNP, addresses the gap between the appointment and the listing. "There was a significant interval between the Receiver's appointment on August 14, 2025 and the commencement of active marketing of the Real Property," it says; the delay "was not attributable to inactivity in the LNS receivership" (First Report, para. 10). Before the building could be shown, the pharmacy's receiver had to wind down the pharmacy and remove its pharmaceuticals, narcotics among them, and its books and records, including confidential patient files. Given "the regulated and sensitive nature of those items," MNP did not market the premises while that work was under way, per the First Report of the Receiver, Sept. 14, 2026, paras. 9(f), 11. It then had the building cleaned and storm-damaged trees removed, at $2,800 and $3,000 respectively, per the report and its statement of receipts and disbursements (First Report, para. 12; App. "F", n. 2).