Insights
The archive, newest first — posts 201–225 of 245. The 8 most recent are on the front. ← The newest analysis
Filing brief
Flato: they agreed to consent, and then opposed
Seven companies holding land in and around Dundalk, Ontario owed more than $29 million to a single lender, were in default on every loan, and had signed a forbearance agreement promising to consent to a receiver if they defaulted under it. They defaulted, and then opposed the receivership — asking for until September 30 to keep fundraising. Justice Dietrich appointed on June 23.
Precedent note
What stay extensions are actually granted
Seven CCAA files, three provinces, and no two extensions alike — four days because the court could not sit, twenty days more than the debtor asked for, a full year when all that is left of the company is a lawsuit. The boundary is the case's own calendar.
Ssense, 11272420 Canada Inc. (Stornoway Diamonds Canada Inc.), KMC Mining Corporation +4 more
Outcome brief
Sunridge Landing: everything to the bank, and still short
Two retail buildings in northeast Calgary — one with a dental clinic as its only tenant, the other entirely empty. The lender tried a judicial listing with a one-day redemption period, then a receiver of rents, and finally a full receivership because it could not get information or access from the owner. The estate now holds $3.32 million against a debt of $5.32 million.
Case update
1451 Wellington: getting the deposits back
An Ottawa condominium begun in 2015 and due in 2023 is now finishing in late 2026. Seventy-two of its ninety-three units were pre-sold and $14.8 million of purchaser deposits was released into the building. When the company withdrew its own motion to approve a deposit return protocol, the court directed the warranty provider's counsel to draft the order instead.
Case update
Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John's: the last contested item is worth $10,000
Four and a half years after the archdiocese filed, the churches are sold, the settlement with the Province is about to pay, and the corporation is ready to move from CCAA into bankruptcy. What is holding it there is a motion about the statues and vestments left behind — offered at $10,000, valued by one claimant's auctioneer at $34,780.
Outcome brief
Exro: nothing left, and the class action is stayed
A TSX-listed clean technology company was delisted in October, put into receivership in November, sold to its secured creditor by credit bid in February, and adjudged bankrupt in May. As at the date of bankruptcy it had no assets remaining to be realized. A shareholder class action, a derivative petition and an oppression claim are all still live somewhere behind that.
Exro Technologies Inc. (TSX:EXRO), DPM Technologies Inc., and Cellex Energy Inc.
Filing brief
Big Country: appointed and sold on the same day
A construction business started near Hanna, Alberta in 1977 and sold to the founders' son in 2019 lost its only director when he died in April 2025, and ran on without one until the last employees were let go. His mother, who holds the security, did not want to run it. A former employee did. The receivership exists to give him title.
Filing brief
Cheema Carriers: the contempt motion that became a compliance order
A receiver appointed in February said it still had no books, no access to the debtors' systems, and no complete picture of the assets, and moved to hold the principal in contempt. At the hearing the judge sent counsel out of the room. They came back with an agreed order carrying the same compliance provisions and no finding of contempt — and, separately, a production order against the accountant, the dispatch software vendor and two other trucking companies.
Filing brief
Clearview: the land bank investors are owners, not creditors
On June 15 a judge expanded an Ontario receivership for the second time, over three more properties whose transactions had not been disclosed to the people who owned them. On June 16 a different judge refused to set aside the swap of a $7.8 million first mortgage for an unsecured note — not because the deal looked sound, but because a fraudulent conveyance protects creditors, and these investors were never creditors.
Filing brief
CFFI Ventures: a carve-out that would have left the court blind and deaf
A Nova Scotia holding company that owns artwork and equity positions is buckling under a debt that started at US$250 million and is now put somewhere between US$790 million and US$1.118 billion. Its first-ranking creditor over one asset wanted that asset pulled out of the sale process and handled separately. The judge approved the process as proposed — and the reason turns on what a monitor is for.
Filing brief
Morgrove Holsteins: a company that could not appear at its own receivership
Two brothers each own half of a cattle farm outside Brantford and each guaranteed its $1.5 million of bank debt. One negotiated a refinancing with another bank. The other refused to sign, not wanting to increase his exposure to a failing business. The motion to compel him was abandoned the day before the hearing, and nobody appeared for the company at all.
Filing brief
Field Aviation: frozen by a cash sweep, funded by the same bank
On April 6 the lender served a notice of default and began sweeping the company's accounts daily to reduce its overadvance. The company could no longer make payroll from its own receivables, froze operations and laid off substantially all of 132 employees. Ten days later the same lender advanced US$1.5 million to cover the payroll. It is now the DIP lender funding the sale.
Case update
XTM: the chargebacks were paid with other merchants' money
A payments platform that held restaurants' funds to load workers' cards ran a $18.75 million deficit against those funds. In January a partner reset every merchant's displayed wallet balance to zero, without notice. Merchants began charging back — and because there was no cash behind the wallets, each clawback came out of the settlement account holding everyone else's money. The monitor now wants it returned, and most of the respondents are pubs answering by email.
Case update
Baffinland: the sealift can't wait for the DIP fight
Three competing debtor-in-possession proposals, a cross-motion by the senior secured lenders to have the court authorise someone else's, and a de novo hearing still to be scheduled. Meanwhile a mine on Baffin Island has one annual window to receive supplies by sea. The court's answer was a US$100 million charge in favour of suppliers that dissolves automatically the moment any DIP is approved.
Filing brief
CYMI Canada: the marquee projects that lost money
An electrical contractor that worked on the Samuel De Champlain Bridge corridor, the Eglinton LRT and the Gordie Howe International Bridge is winding down with roughly $24.4 million of creditors. Its own filing says the net financial contribution of several of those contracts was limited and in many cases negative. Its proposed interim lender is its Spanish parent, and the Gordie Howe joint venture wants time to look at that.
Filing brief
Paystone: the owners want to buy it back, and BDC got a few hours' notice
A payments company's lending syndicate sold out to a distressed fund at a steep discount. Ten days after the initial order, the company intends to seek approval of a sale to a buyer controlled by its own ultimate owners — assuming the new senior debt and leaving the subordinated secured debt, the notes and most of the trade debt unpaid. The subordinate secured creditor learned about the first-day hearing hours before it happened.
Paystone Holdings Inc., Paystone Inc., Atom Growth Inc. and Atom Growth (USA), Inc.
Filing brief
BlueRush: sold without a sales process, and why that was allowed
A receiver appointed in December sold the business in June to Kaltura without ever running a formal marketing process. The reasoning is the useful part: the company had been shopped for about a year before the appointment, it had no money to run a process, and there was no evidence a further one would produce a better price. A receiver's job is the return, not the ritual.
Case update
Brightpath: two groups of noteholders, and a contest over who speaks for them
A mortgage lender's book is realising in dribs and drabs and will not repay its senior lender in full. The receiver has been authorised to give information to the Ontario Securities Commission. And the noteholders — who moved for a receiver before the senior lender did, and who asked that the order include the power to bankrupt the company to preserve a look-back period — are now split into two camps with a motion pending over which of them gets an official committee.
Filing brief
Demers: a reverse vesting order to keep the work permits
A Quebec greenhouse group sold its Lévis and Drummondville operations to Savoura in an ordinary asset sale. The berry fields went to the founding family instead — and by reverse vesting order, for two reasons the trustee sets out plainly: about $44 million of accumulated tax losses that an asset purchase would destroy, and temporary foreign workers holding closed work permits who cannot simply be re-hired by a new company before sowing season.
Filing brief
Golden Prairie: a receiver ran a hotel in Consort for seven months
A Saskatchewan credit union enforced against an Alberta village hotel — 49 keys, 55 more lodge units, and a Subway on the same five acres. The receivership order let MNP market the property but prescribed no process, so the receiver built one: two broker proposals, a flyer to 1,500 investors, 38 confidentiality agreements, seven site tours and six offers. It kept the hotel trading the whole time.
Kerrobert Golden Prairie Lodge Inc. and Consort Country Inn Ltd.
Case update
Newcastle: a receiver's judgment call, and a judge who wanted the reasons
KPMG asked to raise its borrowing from $500,000 to $2 million to finish a Durham Region development rather than sell it four units short. It documented its choice of construction manager in detail — an RFP, four invitations, three interviews, eight stated reasons. It did not document the far bigger decision to complete at all. Myers J. granted the increase because nobody opposed it, and said so.
Filing brief
Assembly Corp: an interim receiver as the price of a stay extension
The senior secured creditor would support the debtor's first stay extension on one condition — that the proposal trustee also be appointed interim receiver. The resulting order takes no possession and controls no property. It gives the same firm the power to approve every disbursement. And a separate provision lets the company pay out Construction Act trust money to subcontractors, including trusts that arose before the filing.
Case update
Imperial Tobacco: who checks the monitors' bills
Three CCAA proceedings, three monitors, three sets of counsel, and files opened in 2019. Rather than tax six sets of accounts itself, the court sends them to the Court-Appointed Mediator — a former Chief Justice of Ontario — who reports whether they are fair and reasonable, under a confidentiality protocol. Meanwhile the same court has been deciding, in writing and jointly with Quebec, whether a claimant needs one diagnosis or two.
Filing brief
RoadX: nobody knows where the trucks are
Five trucking companies, rolling stock scattered across two countries, lessors who may already have repossessed some of it, and management who moved some of it. Myers J. appointed a receiver and then wrote several paragraphs aimed not at the parties but at everyone who is about to meet one — what a receiver is, what it is not, and why "the property is in Texas" is not an answer.
Filing brief
Ecolomondo: the board resigned, so the monitor filed the application
All but one director quit on the morning of the CCAA filing. The last one resigned in the hours after the extension application was served. So the application to extend the stay was brought by KPMG rather than by the debtors — a public company with a tire-pyrolysis plant, hazardous material on site, about $310,000 in the bank, and utilities now asking for deposits.