On March 26, 2020, leave to appeal the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal (the "Alberta CA") in Canada v. Canada North Group Inc.1 ("Canada North Group") was granted by the Supreme Court of Canada (the "SCC").2 No reasons were given.
The Federal Crown sought leave to appeal the Alberta CA majority decision that sections 11.2, 11.51 and 11.52 of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act ("CCAA")3 gave a court the discretion to grant charges in respect of claims for debtor-in-possession financing, directors' indemnification and professional fees (collectively, the "Priming Charges"), in priority to the statutory deemed trusts for unremitted source deductions created by the Income Tax Act4 (the "ITA"), the Canada Pension Plan5 (the "CPP") and the Employment Insurance Act6 (the "EIA" and, together with the ITA and the CPP, the "Fiscal Statutes") in favour of the Crown (collectively, the "Federal Deemed Trusts").7
The above-cited charging provisions of the CCAA each state that a court may order that the charges "rank in priority over the claim of any secured creditor of the company." Following the reasoning of the SCC in Royal Bank of Canada v. Sparrow Electric Corp.8 and First Vancouver Finance v. M.N.R.,9...
