Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Business Development Bank of Canada sought summary judgment against multiple corporate and individual defendants for money owing under a 2023 loan agreement.
   
• Evidentiary gaps in BDBC's initial record required additional affidavit evidence, including a revised spreadsheet of payments and interest calculations.
   
• The court awarded BDBC a reduced principal amount after accounting for payments made by the defendants.
   
• Pre-judgment and post-judgment interest were both assessed at the loan's contractually stipulated rate rather than the statutory rate under the Courts of Justice Act.
   
• Claims for "Other Amounts," including a security fee and NSF charges, were disallowed entirely.
   
• Costs were awarded on the partial indemnity scale rather than the substantial indemnity scale BDBC requested, reflecting the court's criticism of BDBC's litigation conduct.
   

Facts of the case

Business Development Bank of Canada ("BDBC") brought a Simplified Procedure action against 13904903 Canada Inc., 8075611 Canada Limited, Onome Evelyn Egboye Anifowoshe (also known as Onome Evelyn Ebgoye), and Abayomi Olushola Anifowoshe (also known as Abayomi Anifowoshe) to recover money owing under a May 2023 loan agreement ("the Loan"). BDBC moved for summary judgment, and the motion was heard on April 14 and July 13, 2026, by videoconference, with further proceedings conducted in writing thereafter. Oral reasons were delivered on July 21, 2026, and the reasons discussed here are supplemental to those oral reasons. At the oral hearing, the court found that the principal amount of the Loan was $115,000, that interest was simple interest calculated daily, and that the interest rate was variable, based on BDBC's "Floating Base Rate" plus a variance of 11.2 percent. However, the evidentiary record at that stage was insufficient to determine the principal balance owing and the interest accrued over time, so the court ordered BDBC to file additional evidence, including an updated Excel spreadsheet listing payments and interest accrued from May 2023 to at least April 2026. BDBC filed that evidence in the form of a "Further Supplementary Affidavit of Jade Hipson," sworn July 29, 2026 ("the July Affidavit"), attaching a revised spreadsheet showing that the defendants had made total payments of $42,145.75, applied first to reduce principal and otherwise to accrued interest. That additional evidence was filed in late July 2026 but was not brought to the court's attention until the final full week of August 2026.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The Loan's terms governed both the principal owing and the applicable interest rate: simple interest, calculated daily, at BDBC's Floating Base Rate plus 11.2 percent. Under that formula, the stipulated interest rate ranged from a low of 17.75 percent (October 2025 to the date of the decision) to a high of 20.5 percent (July 2023 to June 2024). The court relied on section 130 of the Courts of Justice Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.43, to award interest at rates other than those otherwise prescribed by that Act: for pre-judgment interest, an override of sections 127 and 128; and for post-judgment interest, an override of sections 127 and 129. On costs, the court applied the general principle and proportionality principle in Rule 1.04 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, and directed that the draft judgment comply with Rule 4.01 (Document Standards) and Form 59B.

Reasoning and analysis

Based on Ms. Hipson's unchallenged evidence, the court found that as of July 31, 2026, a total of $140,249.92 was owed, comprising $106,895.73 in principal and $33,354.19 in interest, and it granted summary judgment for the principal amount of $106,895.73. The court separately disallowed BDBC's claim for items under the heading "Other Amounts," which the July Affidavit identified as a $500 security fee charged in June 2023 and $140 in NSF charges from four returned cheques at $35 each. On pre-judgment interest, the court found the stipulated rate commercially reasonable and exercised its discretion under section 130 of the CJA to award pre-judgment interest at that rate rather than the statutory rate, calculating an additional $2,027.22 in interest for the 39-day period from August 1 to September 8, 2026, at $51.98 per day on the principal balance. For post-judgment interest, the court again exercised its section 130 discretion to apply the stipulated rate to the principal amount, reasoning that fixing a rate in advance risked prejudice to either party given the difficulty of predicting how the floating rate would move. The court declined, however, to award post-judgment interest on the pre-judgment interest amount, finding that doing so would effectively convert the Loan's simple interest provision into compound interest. On costs, the court noted that BDBC had asked for costs on the substantial indemnity basis, relying on cost-recovery language in the Loan documents. The court instead awarded costs on the partial indemnity scale, observing that BDBC was only partially successful because the principal amount awarded was less than the amount claimed, and criticizing BDBC, as an institutional lender, for failing to present its evidence in a coherent format — a deficiency that caused the motion to be adjourned from April to July 2026 and consumed more court time than the court considered reasonable for a Simplified Procedure loan action.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court granted BDBC summary judgment on the Loan and the related guarantees. The defendants were ordered to pay $106,895.73 in principal and $35,381.42 in pre-judgment interest — though the disposition paragraph of the decision states this second figure as $35,381.41 [source document states $35,381.42 at paragraph 12 and $35,381.41 at paragraph 17; both figures are reproduced as they appear in the judgment]. The defendants were also ordered to pay post-judgment interest on the principal amount at the Loan's stipulated rate, with no post-judgment interest payable on the pre-judgment interest amount. All other claims relating to amounts said to be owing under the Loan were dismissed. On costs, the court fixed the amount payable to BDBC, on the partial indemnity scale, at $15,000.00, inclusive of fees, disbursements, and applicable HST. The court directed BDBC's counsel to prepare a draft judgment in accordance with the Rules of Civil Procedure and Form 59B, dispensing with the need for the self-represented defendants' approval of its form and content.