When a commercial tenant goes bankrupt, the respective rights of landlords and trustees can be complex to sort out. Yet, as illustrated by recent Ontario Superior Court decision 7636156 Canada Inc. v. OMERS Realty Corporation, 2019 ONSC 6106, this determination can have important ramifications on the assets available for distribution to creditors.
On November 8, 2018, in a decision delivered unanimously from the bench, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the Crown’s superpriority over unremitted Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) is ineffective against a secured creditor who received, prior to a tax debtor’s bankruptcy, proceeds from that taxpayer’s assets.1
From the public policy standpoint, there has been a shift towards more environmental stewardship in Canada, evidenced by heightened media attention on environmental issues and by an expanded legal framework relating to the management of environmental liabilities. For example, directors may be personally liable for violation of environmental statutes1 and may face reputational harm if the corporations they manage are found to have breached environmental rules or norms.
This Fall the Alberta Surface Rights Board (the “Board”) Panel issued its decision in Lemke v Petroglobe Inc, 2015 ABSRB 740. The Panel decided that it did not have authority to proceed with a claim by a landowner for unpaid compensation that had accrued before the date that the operator was assigned into bankruptcy.
On 27 July 2012, Justice Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) released reasons for decision in the Sino-Forest CCAA case concerning the scope and effect of the 2009 amendments to the CCAA that subordinate “equity claims” to all other claims and provide that under a CCAA plan, no payment can be made in respect of equity claims until all other claims are paid in full.
On December 16, 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada ( SCC) released its decision in Re Ted Leroy Trucking Ltd. In its decision, the SCC affirmed the importance of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) as a flexible restructuring tool, and clarified the source and limits of the Court’s authority during CCAA proceedings. Furthermore, the Court overruled the judgment of the B.C.
On July 23, 2008, the Canadian Government proclaimed into force amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada) (the "BIA") that provide super-priority security to claims, subject to specified limits, for unpaid wages ("Unpaid Wage Claims") and unpaid pension plan contributions ("Unpaid Pension Contribution Claims") in a bankruptcy or receivership proceeding, effective as of July 7, 2008.
On March 30, 2021, the Supreme Court of British Columbia (the Court) made an initial order under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (the CCAA) in respect of EncoreFX Inc. (EncoreFX) one year after the commencement of its bankruptcy proceedings. The decision is unusual in that the applicant for the CCAA initial order was EncoreFX’s trustee in bankruptcy (the Trustee), who also sought to be appointed as monitor of EncoreFX (with enhanced powers). On April 22, 2021, the Court released the reasons for its decision.1
On November 1, 2019, amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act,R.S.C. 1985, c. B-3 (BIA) and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-36 (CCAA) came into force. Among other changes described in our previous publication, these amendments expand the protection offered to intellectual property (IP) licensees in the event that the licensor enters insolvency.
One of the most delicate balancing acts that the Courts are asked to perform in Canada is balancing all of the disparate and competing interests in an insolvency process. The Ontario Court of Appeal was asked to review one iteration of this balancing act in Reciprocal Opportunities Incorporated v.