Changes to the E-Filing System — Technical solutions to address various data transmission issues

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy (OSB) is introducing some changes to the E-Filing System, which may affect users, in its next planned release (r 4.4), scheduled for December 11, 2009.

Following is a description of the changes. These changes will also be communicated to trustees' software providers.

• New text will be used in Form 49 (Notice to Creditors of Consumer Proposal). This new text reflects the legislative amendment to subsection 66.17(2) and is required by Directive No. 8R7. The version number to go along with the data file for this change is 2008–06. Starting with release 4.5 of January 22, 2010, the version number will be enforced by a rejection rule, i.e., the system will return the submission with an appropriate message if the version number is incorrect.
• The E-Filing System has been corrected to accept Statements of Receipts and Disbursements (Forms 12-13-14) that display a rate of dividends greater than 100 percent. This allows for payments of interest on proven claims when applicable.
• Before a Certificate of Discharge (Form 84) can be filed to an estate, the E-Filing System will require that a Notice of Impending Automatic Discharge of Bankrupt (Form 68) or a Notice of Bankruptcy and of Impending Automatic Discharge of Bankrupt, and Request of a First Meeting of Creditors (Form 69) be present in the OSB electronic file.
• A rejection rule will prevent filing a second Statement of Receipts and Disbursements (SRD) if filed within 24 hours of a previously submitted SRD.

If you have questions relating to these changes, do not hesitate to contact the Industry Canada E-Filing Help Desk at 1-877-227-3672 or via email.

As for the subsequent planned release (r 4.5) scheduled for January 22, 2010, the following is advance notification of those changes that will be introduced:

• Additional validations on the discharge process will be performed on Form 68 (Notice of Impending Automatic Discharge of Bankrupt) and Form 69 (Notice of Bankruptcy and of Impending Automatic Discharge of Bankrupt, and Request of a First Meeting of Creditors).
• In the Estate Information Summary (EIS), answers to some questions related to business and corporate files in sections 3 and 4 will be enforced by rejection rules. The field "Nature of business," in part 3, will be required for both business and corporate files. This field is required to maintain the statistical data produced by the OSB. For the same reason, the answer to the question "How long have you been in operation," in section 3 or 4, will not be accepted if null or zero. The EIS will also be rejected if the answer to "Maximum number of employees," in part 3 or 4, is not a whole positive number.
• The E-Filing System will reject Form 70 (Notice of Bankruptcy and Request of a First Meeting of Creditors), when submitted to an estate after September 18, 2009, where the number of prior bankruptcies is zero or one.
• The release 4.5 will take into account the text changes on Form 79, Statement of Affairs (Non-Business Bankruptcy/Proposal) and the EIS. It will also include the changes brought up to capture the highest level of education of debtors introduced by Directive No. 8R8. The version number of these two electronic documents (Form 79 and the EIS) will be 2009–11 and its use will be mandatory starting March 2010.