Lost my new condo

 
Here are the quick facts about King’s Mill development project by Van Dyke.
The Van Dyke condo project went bankrupt in December 2023, when the building was only a few months from the closing date. Practically, our condo vaporized from under our noses. The province assigned KSV Restructuring to be the receiver for the bankruptcy. In August 2024, they sold the building to Empire Builder for 48 million dollars (see the doc Factum (DRP and CPO) - Receiver - KSV Restructruring Inc – 10-Oct-2024). There were around 230 units there; in my calculation, the down payments were less than 20 million, and adding the upgrades paid by home buyers around 20 million. That is my estimation because I did not see this value in the documents provided to us. Moreover, Aviva insured the down payments for the King’s Mill project. So, it was no problem for home buyers to get the downpayment money back.

I know greed is human nature, but justice should protect the vulnerable from big corporations getting rich and praying on regular people. So, I do not comment on the big salaries and bonuses KSV and Aviva paid themselves at the end of 2024 instead of cutting the checks to home buyers. For Aviva, there are articles about their bonuses on the Net. In February 2025, Aviva announced that the company’s profit for 2024 was more than 1.7 billion pounds (that is more than 2 billion CND):
https://www.aviva.com/newsroom/news-releases/2025/02/FY2024-results-announcement/

 I also looked for KSV, but I did not find any article about their bonuses and salaries. That is a well-kept secret, and I do not know how much money they kept for themselves from the 48 million.

But I will comment on the Honorable Supreme Court Justice Penny’s ruling allowing those companies to get rich from our money. Of course, a Supreme Judge ruling is not questionable, depending on who you ask.

In October 2024, we, the home buyers, were invited to an online meeting with Honorable Supreme Court Judge Penny. Representatives from KSV, Aviva, and Tarion were also present. We were informed that we were not allowed to record the meeting.
The question period started after KSV presented the facts about bankruptcy and the steps taken to pay the home buyers. Since the presenter did not specify numbers, I asked the Honorable Judge if the calculation included downpayment and upgrades. Judge Penny said that he did not know the answer about upgrades. Then, Tarion and Aviva’s representatives told us that only the downpayment was assured. The first question in my mind was, How come the Honorable Judge does not know about the upgrades? Was the document provided to him incomplete, or did he not read it?

Then, voices from the audience said, “Some of us paid 10,000, and others maybe 3,000 for the upgrades,” “Where did the money go?” I think KSV should have answered since they had the money, but no one answered. How could they? Most of the 48 million went to Aviva, more than they paid us, and as I mentioned, they reported billions of dollars in profit and big bonuses.

The Honorable Judge Penny said, “There is not enough money,” ignoring the 48 million I discussed at the beginning of this article. Once again, I asked myself if he read the docs before the hearings.

My heart sank at that moment. With a wave of a hand, the Honorable Judge deprived the home buyers of getting money back for what we paid for the upgrades.

And it did not stop there. Judge Penny ordered Aviva to pay the down payments with no time limit and no interest for whatever delay Aviva decided upon. That was worse than no ruling since Aviva had the contractual obligation to pay the down payment anyway, and lower courts might have established more favorable rules. And whenever I asked Aviva about when they would pay after the meeting, they took full advantage of the ruling, saying, “Judge Penny did not establish a timeline; wait.”

And by the way, for the Honorable Judge’s saying” “there is not enough money,” Tarion and Aviva later contradicted him. When I emailed Tarion asking if they still supervise the bankruptcy, they said that they act only when “there is no money to pay home buyers, but in this specific case, the money is there.” Aviva also said in emails that they have the money but need to check the documents.
 
After a while, Aviva changed the tune and said they still check the documents submitted to them. The documents submitted by the home buyers were:

• A page with the address where to send the check
• A page with an ID
• The first page of the Agreement with the Van Dyke builder
• An Agreement to terminate the deal with Van Dyke accepting to receive the down payment back, plus a formal interest Aviva calculated and let us know the interest (that, in my case, was less than the upgrades, and I will pay taxes on that interest). That simple document (where we had to input one date and 2 values) had a special design to make mistakes easily. I cannot share a screenshot since there is a disclaimer on it.

If you are slow, that was 1 minute ( let’s say 5 minutes at most, me being very generous here) to check those 4 pages and multiply that by 230 home buyers, which could be not more than 1 week of work for one clerk. It took more than 4 months to do so, and with every passing day, we lost money because of inflation and lost opportunities. I got the check for downpayment and interest in early March 2025. Even with the little (in your face) interest added to the downpayment, we lost a lot of money considering the market value of our deposit 5 years ago.

​So, let’s suppose the Honorable Superior Court Justice Penny’s decision was for political reasons or any other consideration based on the disastrous construction development status in the province. In this case, I would like to remind him that if his ruling sided with big corporations against regular people dreaming of having a home, making the rich richer at the expense of others, the result is the feeling developing in many of us that there are two tiers of justice, and that is alarming. Besides, this ruling took out of the market some of the faithful people of the province who were willing to invest at home, which increased the construction business problem in the province.

​For me, the ruling was not justice but politics. I remind the Honorable Justice of some quotes from personalities who knew justice far better than me.
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected will be as outraged as those who are.” – Benjamin Franklin.