The Supreme Court of British Columbia has confirmed that monetary penalties and disgorgement orders from regulatory proceedings are exempt from a bankruptcy discharge. In 2015, the British Columbia Securities Commission ordered Thalbinder Singh Poonian and Shailu Poonian to pay more than $19 million in penalties and disgorgement after the commission found that the pair had engaged in market manipulation. In 2018, the Poonians sought a discharge from bankruptcy absolving them of their debts.

Since our last update in October 2019, there have been many interesting developments in the area of environmental law. The COVID-19 pandemic, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and climate change were key topics that shaped judicial, legislative, and policy changes in British Columbia and across Canada. With respect to judicial developments, disputes over natural resource projects, contaminated sites, environmental prosecutions, as well as judicial review or appeal decisions arising from environmental regulatory bodies, brought many changes to the landscape of environmental law.

In Chandos Construction Ltd v Deloitte Restructuring Inc[1] [Chandos], the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada (the “SCC”) reaffirmed the common law anti-deprivation rule in Canada.

Le 1^er avril 2021, la Cour suprême du Canada a rejeté la demande d’autorisation d’appel de la décision de la Cour d’appel du Québec dans l’affaire Séquestre de Media5 Corporation, 2020 QCCA 943. Par conséquent, les tribunaux du Québec ont maintenant confirmation de la marche à suivre pour la nomination de séquestres nationaux à la demande des créanciers garantis.

Le 20 juillet 2020, la Cour d’appel du Québec annulait la décision rendue par la Cour supérieure et confirmait les principes suivants :

On April 1^st, 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the application for leave to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal of Québec in Séquestre de Media5 Corporation, 2020 QCCA 943. As a result, Quebec courts now have clarity regarding their ability to appoint national receivers for secured creditors.

On July 20, 2020, the Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s decision and confirmed the following principles:

We previously discussed the Court's decision in Yukon (Government of) v Yukon Zinc Corporation, 2020 YKSC 16, which opened the door to partial termination of agreements in a receivership, an action generally considered to not be permitted in the past.

Cryptocurrency has been recognized as “property” for the purposes of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) in Re Quadriga Fintech Solutions Corp. et al.,^[1]the first Canadian case of its kind.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, provincial emergency orders required the majority of businesses to migrate their workforce to a work-from-home environment. As the pandemic has persisted, what was originally a short-term solution for many businesses, has led many of them to reconsider their current and future need for office space. For those businesses tied into long-term leases, many have turned to subleasing all or a portion of their space as a way to reduce their overhead.

Good afternoon.

Following are this week’s summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

On April 1, 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an application for leave to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal of Québec (QCA) in Séquestre de Media5 Corporation, 2020 QCCA 943, which had put an end to a long-lasting debate on the availability of ‘national’ receivers to Québec secured creditors. The decision of the QCA is now final.