Auberge du Lac Sacacomie: the offer that would cover every debt

Most of the businesses in this record are worth less than they owe. This one may not be.

Auberge du Lac Sacacomie inc. filed a notice of intention to make a proposal on June 18, 2026, with KPMG Inc. as trustee, in the Superior Court of Québec, Commercial Division, district of Saint-Maurice, per Requête pour l'approbation d'un financement intérimaire, June 30, 2026, para. 1 and Certificate of the Notice of Intention, June 18, 2026.

What is being sold

The Auberge sits at 4000 chemin Yvon-Plante in Saint-Alexis-des-Monts, in the Mauricie, on three lots of the cadastre du Québec in the registration division of Maskinongé. It is built in round-log chalet style with 106 rooms, and a conference centre of 16 meeting rooms taking between 10 and 300 people. It is set on the edge of the Réserve faunique Mastigouche, overlooking Lac Sacacomie, on private land of more than 69,000 square metres, per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 5–7.

Beyond lodging there is a restaurant specialising in regional cuisine and a full spa — indoor and outdoor therapeutic baths, saunas, a eucalyptus steam room, a pool and treatment rooms — with lake access and hiking, canoeing, kayaking, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing from the door, per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 8–9.

It employs 137 people: 84 permanent and 53 seasonal. Madame Joyce Plante is its sole shareholder, president and secretary, per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 10–11.

The loop that closed

The stated cause is the pandemic and rising operating costs, but the mechanism described is worth reading closely, because it is a trap rather than a shock.

Successive closures and the collapse in tourist traffic cost the business its operating revenue: 2020 sales were barely a quarter of pre-pandemic levels. That deprived it of the liquidity required to carry out necessary renovations to its installations. Tourism then recovered — but by that point the facilities "n'étaient plus au goût des touristes", no longer to tourists' taste, so the Auberge never regained its pre-pandemic occupancy, per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 22–23.

A resort that cannot earn enough to renovate cannot renovate enough to earn. The revenue came back to the region and went to properties that had been able to spend.

On top of that, margins were hit by higher operating costs, increased costs under a new collective agreement, third-party management fees, and the cost of relocating guests during a temporary closure of the Auberge in 2026, per Requête, June 30, 2026, para. 24.

Who is owed, and the shape of it

Three conventional secured lenders hold immovable hypothecs over the Auberge, and the identity of all three is worth noting — two are federal bodies and the third is a local caisse:

per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 14–15.

Against the same property sit three legal hypothecs, and their total is the striking number:

per Requête, June 30, 2026, para. 16.

Those legal hypothecs come to $1,175,126.59, against $1,198,939.52 of conventional secured lending. The unpaid sales taxes and the unpaid power bill very nearly equal everything the three institutional lenders advanced. That is what operating a business through a liquidity squeeze looks like on a title search: the state and the utility become secured creditors by operation of law while nobody signs anything.

On the movables, the Caisse and BDC hold hypothecs over the universality of the debtor's movable property, and so does Banque nationale du Canada — though the debtor says no sum was ever advanced by BNC, which appears instead to have acquired by assignment certain movable hypothecs originally registered by a lessor. Equipment leases and instalment sales are registered in favour of VW Credit Canada Inc., CNH Capital Canada Receivables Trust, Mitsubishi HC Capital Canada Crédit-bail inc. and Vendorlender Funding Corp., per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 17–19.

The totals: at the date of the notice of intention, sums due to creditors including ordinary creditors came to $3,751,163.36, excluding a further $2,084,923 owed to parties related to the debtor. And no wage arrears are owing to employees, other than amounts due for vacation, per Requête, June 30, 2026, paras. 20–21.