The regulation of payday loans holds the potential of extending the benefits of regulating overindebtedness, currently provided via bankruptcy legislation to the middle-class, to lower income debtors. This potential needs to be balanced against lower income debtors' need for credit and the...

When debt becomes unmanageable, two options for a consumer debtor in Canada are: (1) enlisting the services of a bankruptcy trustee, and (2) becoming a client of a not-for-profit credit counselling agency. Each of these options is regulated differently and has public and private dimensions. At...

Introduction. The Shaky Foundations of the Home Capital Crisis / Stephanie Ben-Ishai -- Governance Challenges in Times of Crisis / Poonam Puri -- HOOPP and Home Capital: Pension Funds as Good Governors and Crisis Managers / Simon Archer -- Securities Regulators and Investor Education / Gail E....

This article emerges from an exploration of the meanings of consumer bankruptcy in the current context of Canadian society, as well as the role consumer bankruptcy plays in shaping this context. Examining consumer bankruptcy through the lens of gender relations, the claim is made that Canadian...

For two reasons, the conventional wisdom is that the poor are not heavy users of the insolvency system. First, creditors are reluctant to extend credit to the poor because the risks of non-payment are high. Not having been able to borrow, the poor are not over-indebted and are therefore not in...

A continuing theme of our work, and that of others, has been the failure of insolvency law to keep pace with the new problems faced by low-income debtors. Researchers have suggested that the cost of personal bankruptcy puts it beyond the reach of many of those in need of it, though it has proven...

In this article, using a comparative approach (Canadian versus American and automotive versus financial sectors), we build on the defense of the Chapter 11 automotive cases that one of us has already put forward elsewhere. That is, the Chrysler and GM cases did not subvert normal Chapter 11...

In this paper we focus on the concern that a preference for quick sales over traditional reorganization cases - which we see in both the United States and Canada - might allow the debtor's management to work with secured lenders to extract assets from the debtor in a way that would not be...

In this article, Professors Stephanie Ben-Ishai and Saul Schwartz examine several ways in which the government becomes a creditor of economically disadvantaged Canadians and its role in limiting the options available for resolving the resulting overindebtedness. Specifically, the authors explore...