Commemorating Another Decade Of The Ontario PPSA Check-The-Box System

This article was authored by Aaron Goldstein, an articling student in Gowling WLG's Hamilton office.

It is now 2017 and we can mark 10 years of the iPhone, 40 years of the Toronto Blue Jays and 25 years since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.  In addition to those milestones, August 1, 2017 marked the 10^th anniversary of the legislative decision to repeal and replace sections of the Ontario PPSA¹ dealing with the check-the-box system used on financing statements to identify the collateral subject to the security interest.  In an earlier edition of Fully Secured (September 2012), we provided an update on the fifth anniversary of the Ontario Government's plan to modernize the personal property register by replacing this system with narrative collateral descriptions.  However, it is now five years later and the check-the-box system endures.