Insights
The archive, newest first — posts 226–245 of 245. The 8 most recent are on the front. ← The newest analysis
Case update
Walton Canadian Land: nine years, forty-nine reports, creditors paid in full
Six Walton land funds filed 2025 annual reports on the same day, nine years into a CCAA that began in April 2017. One of them has now paid its proven unsecured claims in full, made a distribution to equity, and earned more in bank interest last year than it spent on professionals. What is still holding it open is a lawsuit and a school site nobody remembered it owned.
Filing brief
Snaile: a monitor without a CCAA
A lender applied to appoint a receiver. Before that was decided, it obtained something else on consent — Grant Thornton installed as "Monitor" under the Courts of Justice Act, the PPSA and the OBCA, with a set of injunctions freezing payments to insiders, protecting supplier and customer relationships, and requiring daily reporting on every dollar in and out. The company keeps running. Nobody takes possession.
Outcome brief
Haliburton Chrysler: four years old, $6.1 million short
A dealership incorporated in January 2022 filed a notice of intention, failed to produce a proposal when the sale it was built around fell through, and was deemed bankrupt on May 5. Its landlord was a related company that is now bankrupt too, and is owed $874,601. Its sister dealership went in three weeks earlier. And three vehicles moved from that estate to this one.
Case update
AMCO Farms: the order left out what the endorsement granted
In January a judge said he was satisfied the monitor needed an estate bank account to pay dividends. The claims procedure order that issued did not contain that relief. Four months later the monitor is asking to be authorised retroactively — because RBC demanded the company close its account, and because a monitor's general trust account cannot pay a dividend.
Case update
Steve's Music: five stores down to one, and a proposal still to write
A family music store that has sold instruments since 1965 filed a notice of intention in February with five locations and more than eighty staff. Four stores are closed. What is left is one Montreal shop and a web store — now spending money to restock the shelves the liquidation sale emptied, which is why the forecast is negative and the extension matters.
Filing brief
999 Gold Depot: one requirement to pay, and the business stopped
A family precious-metals business runs about $40 million a year through a 780 square foot shop with two induction furnaces. In April the CRA served a requirement to pay on the company's only bank. It lost access to its operating funds and filed a notice of intention four working days later. The stay got the money back — the $32 million claim behind it is still there.
Case update
RioCan-HBC: $400,000 in Yorkdale costs against the estate, not the receiver
A receiver asked the court to approve a sublease of the former Hudson's Bay space at Yorkdale. The landlord opposed and won, then sought $707,229 in costs — and asked that the receiver pay them personally. Kimmel J. refused personal liability, charged the estate instead, and explained why the party actually bearing the loss is the secured creditor that designed the transaction.
Filing brief
Seafood 2000: the lobster season would not wait
A Prince Edward Island processor with $26.5 million of assets and $22.4 million of debt could not close a working-capital facility for the spring lobster season. It filed under the CCAA on May 15 with a $490,000 debtor-in-possession loan from Finance PEI and express authority to pay for lobster and bait. A week later it asked to increase that loan to $3.8 million.
Case update
ONxpress: the claims officer the order forgot to protect
When Deutsche Bahn and Aecon wound up their GO Expansion operating company, a live human rights complaint went with it. The court's answer was to appoint a former HRTO adjudicator as claims officer so the complaint could still be heard by someone qualified to hear it. Drafted under time pressure, the order left out the protections such an officer normally gets — and his engagement letter, signed afterwards, requires them.
Outcome brief
Map Art: $600,000 of road maps, and no liquidator would take them
A Pickering company that had published road maps across Canada since the 1990s carried $600,000 of inventory on its books. Its statement of affairs values that inventory at nil, and the trustee reports that of the several liquidators approached before the bankruptcy, none was willing to buy or even remove it. There are no secured creditors, which is why the unsecured ones may actually be paid something.
Case update
Stornoway: Renard, from diamond mine to demolition tender
Two and a half years and eleven stay extensions after Stornoway filed, the monitor now runs the company, operations have permanently ceased, and four dismantling contractors have bid on tearing the mine down. Before any of them can start, Quebec has to approve the release of an insurance guarantee — the money that pays to restore the site is security the province is holding.
Outcome brief
KalGene: the asset was a licence, and the NRC took it back
A Montreal biotech spent nineteen years developing an Alzheimer's drug candidate on technology licensed from the National Research Council. Development substantially stopped in late 2022. In January 2025 the NRC terminated the licence. The statement of affairs shows $22.6 million of liabilities, all unsecured, against roughly $38,000 of assets — and no distribution is expected.
Filing brief
Old Lakeshore Road: 310 units that were never built
Five addresses on Burlington's waterfront, assembled across two PINs, earmarked for a 310-unit condominium. Nothing was built. TD is owed more than $18.2 million against undeveloped land, and when it applied to appoint a receiver nobody opposed — including the guarantors, one of whom told the court it supported the appointment.
Core FSC Lakeshore Limited Partnership and Core FSC Lakeshore GP Inc.
Case update
Jefferson Properties: six units vested in a day, and a fight about who is driving the costs
On one day in May a receiver obtained six approval and vesting orders — two freehold townhouses and four stacked units, sold individually. On the same day, the same judge declined to schedule a self-represented respondent's motion to investigate the receiver, and ordered him to pay $600 for the attendance. A motion to declare him a vexatious litigant is set for August.
2011836 Ontario Corp. and Jefferson Properties Limited Partnership
Filing brief
Kelsey's and Montana's: two profitable restaurants filed anyway
Two franchised restaurants in adjacent units of the same Kingston mall, sharing an owner and a hundred employees, filed notices of intention on the same day. Their fifteen-week cash flow forecasts both project a net inflow. What they cannot pay out of that margin is the HST they collected and did not remit.
Filing brief
BIC Fund: $12 million owed, $57,000 left
A church denomination's deposit fund took money from several hundred people — congregants, ministries and the denomination itself — and lent it to member churches. On April 2 its treasurer of nearly thirty years told the denomination's board that he had put most of the fund's assets into a private company he controlled, and that he had kept crediting depositors 4% interest on statements when there were no returns to pay it.
Filing brief
Northorizon: two breakout rooms, and the bison equipment came out of the sale
A receiver came to court in Sault Ste. Marie for an approval and vesting order after nine months of marketing. The debtor, unrepresented since his lawyer retired, wanted an adjournment and was making comments about chattels that nobody in the hearing could follow. The judge sent everyone into a breakout room. Then, when he said he did not understand, sent them back in again.
Case update
Korite: the last $751,872 goes to the farmer, not the bank
An ammolite miner was sold in four days in September 2024. Twenty months later the receivership is still open, because one of its two quarries went with the business and the other did not. Alberta's environment regulator refused the receiver's cheque, insisted the work be done, and then declined to sign the agreement that finally resolves it. The money goes to the landowner, who will backfill the pit and reseed it.
Filing brief
Synaptive: out of CCAA in June, into receivership by April
A Toronto medical device company emerged from a CCAA reverse vesting transaction on June 26, 2025. Ten months later a receiver was appointed on consent. Every Canadian director and employee has now gone, and the receiver has re-engaged some of them as contractors to keep the patents renewed. The proposed buyer is a group of former managers, funding the sale process that will sell the company to them.
Outcome brief
Mitel: 2.9% of the revenue, 100% of the guarantee
Mitel Networks Corporation was one leased office in Ottawa, 323 employees and a guarantee of the group's entire US$1.31 billion of funded debt; its CCAA Part IV recognition proceeding ran 106 days and ended on a three-page certificate from FTI.