What a co-op member is owed

The co-operative that filed for creditor protection in Saint John this month has been buying fish from the same island since 1940. It was incorporated by Letters Patent on July 9 of that year, and its general manager, swearing the first affidavit, describes an object that has not moved since: to assist and promote fishers. Island Fishermen's Co-operative Association Limited processes lobster, snow crab and rock crab at 90 Principale Street in Lamèque, at the top of New Brunswick's Acadian Peninsula, runs a fish market at the same site, and owns six houses in the village to put its temporary foreign workers in. Eleven people work there year-round; in season it employs about 360 more, per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, paras. 7, 9, 23, 25.

What makes it worth a professional's morning is the way it owes money to its own members. From 1940 until 2019, joining meant a nominal admission fee and then mandatory contributions levied either on your catch or on your wages, depending on whether you fished or worked the line. Those contributions are called Members' Loans, and together they form a fund the by-law calls the Loan Capital, per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, para. 10. There are 91 active members, and the affidavit places them in a single clause: "Members are creditors of the Applicant for varying amounts," per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, para. 16. The Loan Capital stands at $4,669,000.41, listed in the application under unsecured creditors alongside the trade, per Notice of Application, Aug. 7, 2026, para. 16(e). The affidavit is blunter: it is "an unsecured liability of the Applicant," per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, para. 18.

The company attributes the collapse to the end of the Nordic Shrimp fishery, margin compression across crab and lobster, tariff uncertainty, escalating fuel, a lack of available credit — and to a significant reduction in members' and non-members' delivery of raw products, which is to say that its suppliers stopped supplying, per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, para. 52. The cushion was already gone: a 2024 sale of its interest in Lamèque Offshore Fishing Ltd. yielded roughly $24,000,000, about $18,000,000 of which went to debts and operating losses, the balance to working capital since fully expended. The audited statements show a loss of $8,498,435 across the fifteen months to December 31, 2025, per Affidavit of Brian Bezeau, sworn Aug. 6, 2026, paras. 54, 57.

Justice Darrell Stephenson granted the initial order effective 12:01 a.m. on August 12, appointing Ernst & Young Inc. monitor under s. 11.7(1) of the CCAA, staying proceedings to August 21, and granting a $100,000 administration charge ranking ahead of every secured creditor including the Canada Revenue Agency and the Business Development Bank of Canada, per Initial Order, Aug. 12, 2026, paras. 12, 17, 23, 25, 36. When the Monitor listed the creditors a week later, the members came third — behind $14.1 million USD said to be owing to the company's broker, WhiteCap International Seafood Exporters Inc., and $7.9 million to BDC, and ahead of the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, the crab and lobster suppliers and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, per First Report of the Monitor, Aug. 19, 2026, para. 14. The first entry is contested: WhiteCap's solicitor wrote on August 18 to say title to product passes to WhiteCap when it advances funds, so that it holds no claim at all — a position the Monitor records as differing from its understanding of the company's, per First Report of the Monitor, Aug. 19, 2026, paras. 17–19.

On August 21 Justice Stephenson granted an amended and restated initial order, and granted more than had been asked for. The application had signalled a stay to September 30 and a charge lifted to $250,000, per Notice of Application, Aug. 7, 2026, para. 3. The ARIO carries a stay to October 2, a charge of $300,000, and fresh authority to cease or shut down operations and to dispose of up to $200,000 of non-material assets, per Amended and Restated Initial Order, Aug. 21, 2026, paras. 11, 12, 23. By then the company had decided not to operate the Fall 2026 lobster season at all, and was arranging the return of its remaining 44 temporary foreign workers to their home countries, per First Report of the Monitor, Aug. 19, 2026, paras. 28–29. One line on the face of the ARIO is struck through by hand and initialled — the list of members that would have been attached as Schedule "B" — in an order that elsewhere recites an affidavit confirming the members were served.

Where a shareholder sits in a CCAA is settled. Where a member sits is not, because membership in a Canadian co-operative is rarely one relationship. The fisher at Lamèque sells his catch to the plant, which makes him a supplier; his mandatory contributions capitalized it, which makes him a lender; and his membership is his ownership, which in an ordinary corporate insolvency would put him behind everyone in the room. Nothing in the CCAA sorts that out. Five files on this record show courts sorting it out anyway, and reaching, on the whole, past the co-operatives statutes to do it.