Case Comment: Try and Try Again - CCAA Court Orders Union Members to a Second Vote

In 2005, Justice Blair, for the Ontario Court of Appeal, cautioned courts acting pursuant to the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act ("CCAA") that their jurisdiction, broad as it was, was not without limit. The setting was the restructuring of Stelco, a complicated and hotly contested affair, which by then had been ongoing for fourteen months or so.

Five years later, the extent to which the Court of Appeal's caution on the limits of the court's jurisdiction is being respected is open to question, as evidenced by a ruling made last week by the Québec Superior Court in the restructuring proceedings of AbitibiBowater Inc. ("Abitibi").

In a judgment dated June 11, 2010, Justice Gascon, sitting as a CCAA Court judge, granted Abitibi's motion for an order requiring certain union members to take a second vote on an agreement entered into between it and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union regarding the amendment and renewal of collective bargaining