Finance Committee on July 7th, 2020

[Elisabeth Lang]

No. I wouldn't be able to speak to who is closest to capacity, but one thing I would say is that, as I mentioned, with my office having been kind of catapulted into the 21st century, so have the courts. It may be possible that they can leverage technology and find efficiencies that way as well, so that might solve a bit of the pressure.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's funny. I have a local judge who just moved into the house next to me, so maybe I'll chat with him about it.

I have an additional question that I'm quite concerned about. I think one of the reasons why you haven't seen the dominoes start falling is that there has been a mix of emergency supports that are landing in the right place. There have been, as you pointed out, informal dealings, as there's an incentive for a creditor not to force a debtor into bankruptcy, because they might come out on the other side.

I want to make sure that we don't get into the business of throwing good money after bad if there are companies that are not going to come through this. I would rather deal with that now than spend a lot of taxpayers' money to float structurally unsound companies through a difficult period. Are there particular factors that you've observed historically that would be indicators as to when a company is likely to succeed in a financial storm like this?

[Elisabeth Lang]

That wouldn't be data we would have, because we have the companies that have filed a formal proceeding, although, as I mentioned, many of those are filing, doing a restructuring and coming out the other end. That would certainly be a good question for policy-makers to look at.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm curious. One of the things I've seen from commentaries in the news on the issue of bankruptcies is about what we're likely to see. Perhaps when the emergency supports are no longer in place or when taxes become due, or whatever the case may be, when we have a clearer picture of what “normal” looks like, to use your analogy, that's when we'll have a handle on whether things have gone wrong or not.

Certain sectors have been hit very hard. I'm thinking of restaurants, for example, and tourism operators. I've seen some concerns raised about the potential for significant liquidation efforts across entire industries, essentially, all at the same time. Have you ever seen an instance where an entire sector faced extraordinary pressure that led to difficulties in the liquidation process?

Essentially, I'm trying to find all the things that could go wrong should there be an uptick in bankruptcies. I'm wondering if you've seen them before and what lessons there may be. Have you ever seen anything like that on the liquidation side of things?

[Elisabeth Lang]

I haven't studied my historical stats that closely to be able to say that I have, but I would say that I don't think a specific sector suffering inordinately versus other sectors would have an impact on our capacity to handle the insolvency filings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. We will wrap it up there, unless you have a really critical one, Mr. Fraser.

Mr. McLeod, all the way from the Northwest Territories, you get to wrap 'er up.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the superintendent for the presentation.

I have one quick question regarding the number of bankruptcies in the indigenous population. I'm not sure if that's data that you collect, but I'm curious to hear what is the percentage of bankruptcies amongst indigenous people versus what the rest of the population is facing.

[Elisabeth Lang]

Unfortunately, this is not data that we collect at the moment. It's something that we will look at when we update our forms and work with StatsCan to see how we can properly collect that kind of data.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

When are the forms supposed to be updated?

[Elisabeth Lang]

Well, we will see. It's definitely something that I want to focus on this year, to the extent that we can. Right now, all of our efforts since March have been focused on COVID-19 issues.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Okay, so you don't collect the data for indigenous corporations or the personal information.

[Elisabeth Lang]

No, I don't believe we do for corporations either. Unfortunately, we don't collect any visible minority data at all.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

All right. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. I don't see any other hands coming up.

Thank you, Ms. Lang. You have an important role to play. I come out of the farm sector and have been involved in quite a few farm debt review cases. People who've been in financial trouble certainly never want to get into financial trouble again. If anything can be done to help them get through it and be productive in society, that's an important role that you have to play.

Also, I would say that if there are some things you want to tell ISED, don't be afraid to give any of us a call, and we'll tell them for you.

[Elisabeth Lang]

Okay. Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, and thanks to all your staff for the work you do in your area in terms of bankruptcies.

[Elisabeth Lang]

Thanks to all of you for having me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

All right.

With that, folks, we'll call it a day. The meeting is adjourned.