In a year quite unlike any other, the landscape of Canadian restructuring law saw significant developments in 2020. The COVID-19 crisis put novel issues before the courts, challenged businesses in unforeseen ways and saw various supports and concessions offered to struggling businesses from governments and creditors. Ultimately, while the supports and concessions enabled many businesses to avoid insolvency proceedings in 2020, many others sought the protection of an insolvency filing, with industries such as the retail industry particularly impacted.

In a previous post we discussed how the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta recently authorized a sale transaction after being satisfied with the appropriateness of a sales process that was undertaken prior to the issuance of the receivership order.

Section 11.4 of the CCAA requires that persons identified as critical suppliers to a debtor company continue to provide goods and services on terms and conditions with the existing supply relationship.