Where Oh Where Is My Debtor? Recent Changes To The Ontario Personal Property Security Act

Introduction

There is an old expression that "the more things change, the more they stay the same". This could apply to some recent amendments to the Ontario Personal Property Security Act R.S.O. 1990 c.P.10 (the "Ontario PPSA") that came into force on December 31, 2015. The amendments are intended to bring certainty to the rules for determining the location of the debtor for the purpose of registering and searching under the Ontario PPSA when a secured party takes security over certain kinds of collateral. It could be argued that these amendments merely substitute one set of uncertain rules for another set of uncertain rules.

First – A Little Bit of History about the Old Rules