New Century Greenhouses: twelve vehicles, by serial number

The businesses are commercial greenhouse facilities in and around Redcliff, Alberta — six companies, each operating a greenhouse on its own parcel of land, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), para. 8.

They borrowed from Farm Credit Canada together, as joint and several co-borrowers under the same loan agreements, and FCC took mortgages over the various parcels giving it blanket security across all of them. The companies share common and overlapping directors and management, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), paras. 9–13.

One borrower group, one lender, one set of security — and, until June 29, six separate receivership estates and a receiver that could not get the books.

Seven weeks of asking

Justice M.E. Burns appointed Ernst & Young Inc. receiver of all six companies on May 5, 2026. Paragraphs 4 to 6 of that order require the debtors — along with all their current and former directors, officers, employees, agents, accountants, legal counsel and shareholders — and the three guarantors, as individuals with notice of the order, to cooperate with the receiver, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), paras. 1–2.

On May 14 the receiver emailed two of the guarantors, Balwinder Singh and Satnam Singh, requesting the information the receivership order entitles it to, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), para. 3.

By late June it was back before the court asking for an order compelling production within ten days, with costs against the guarantors on a solicitor and own client, full indemnity basis, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), paras. 1, 3 of the remedy claimed.

What had to be ordered

The value of reading a cooperation order is that it inventories, item by item, what the receiver did not have. This one runs as follows, all of it to be delivered to the receiver's counsel by email within ten days:

• contact information for all owners of the debtors, with email addresses and phone numbers;
• bank account details for all six companies, and three years of bank statements for every account;
• the books and records, specifically including each company's CRA business number, its most recent payroll remittance statement, the GST returns it has filed, a list of the GST returns still outstanding, and the account statements for its GST and source deduction accounts;
• a capital asset listing of all property, plant and equipment, including a listing of all serial number goods;
• tax returns for the last three fiscal periods, and financial statements for the last three, for each company;
• aged accounts receivable listings detailed by customer and invoice, with copies of all supporting invoices;
• tax certificates for all real property owned;
• payroll records including detailed records for 2025 and 2026 and a schedule of amounts owing to employees for outstanding wages and vacation pay;
• a list of all key holders for every owned or leased property, with their contact information;

per Cooperation Order, June 29, 2026, para. 2(a)–(l).

And then paragraph 2(m), which asks for the location and status of twelve vehicles, each identified by vehicle identification number: a 2013 Honda Civic and a 2015 Honda Civic; a 2015 Dodge Caravan and three more from 2016, 2016 and 2018; a 2017 Mazda; three 2019 Ford Transits and a 2022 Ford Transit; and a 2019 Hino truck, per Cooperation Order, June 29, 2026, para. 2(m).

Serial-number goods are registered in the personal property registry by VIN, so the receiver knows precisely what the estates own. What it does not know, seven weeks after appointment, is where any of it is.

That is the practical shape of a non-cooperative receivership. Not a legal dispute about entitlement — nobody appears to contest that the receiver is entitled to this — but a receiver holding a list of assets and no way to find them, obliged to spend estate money on an application to be told.

Six estates into one

The second order deals with a different inefficiency.

Each company had been assigned its own estate number by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy — 25-095633 through 25-095638, one apiece. Running six parallel administrations for a group that borrowed as one, secured as one, and is managed by the same people means six sets of everything, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), para. 12.

So the receiver sought procedural consolidation of the estates under a single estate number, on the grounds that administering them together allows the receivership to be completed efficiently and avoids unnecessary duplication, and that no creditor will be prejudiced by it, per Application (Consolidation & Cooperation), paras. 2 of the remedy claimed, 14–15.

The distinction matters and is worth stating for readers who see the word "consolidation" and reach for Redwater or the substantive consolidation cases. This is procedural, not substantive. Nothing is being said about pooling the assets of one company to pay the creditors of another; the estates keep their identities and their claims. What changes is that they are administered under one file, with one set of reports, one set of filings and one set of professional fees.

For a group where the lender's security is already blanket and the borrowers are already jointly and severally liable, that consolidation carries little risk of prejudice — which is the point the application makes, in one line, without needing more.

Both orders were pronounced at Edmonton on June 29, 2026, per Consolidation Order, June 29, 2026 and Cooperation Order, June 29, 2026.

The ten days ran from service.