INUVIK
Despite an announcement of court-supervised restructuring for the Inuvialuit Development Corporation-owned Northern Transportation Company Limited, other development corp. companies will not be affected.

A welder works at the Northern Transportation Company Limited shipyard in Hay River in this undated company photo. - photo by Shane Sadoway/courtesy of Northern Transportation Company Limited

Northern Transportation Company Limited - which runs barges up the Mackenzie River to Inuvik - announced on April 27 that it had initiated a process under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act to facilitate restructuring and refinancing of its operations.

"It's isolated to the NTCL company," said Nathan Graham, chief corporate officer with the Inuvialuit Development Corporation (IDC) which owns NTCL's parent company, NorTerra Inc. "There is no impact or reflection on NorTerra Group and other IDC companies."

Still, the announcement on April 27 will have an impact on how communities up and down the Mackenzie River are supplied in the coming years. Graham said plans would not change for the 2016 shipping season but the outcome for 2017 has not yet been decided.

"We're not there yet," he said. "In the next several months, we will work towards a plan for what this company will look like in the future. It's still our intent at this time to deliver to Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta communities."

While Gordon said there were many factors leading towards the decision, he said the "precipitous decline" of the oil and gas industry was the largest.

"This is something we've been dealing with for a long time," he said. "This is really the only avenue that addressed all the challenges we have."

He said the decision to enter into the restructuring process was a difficult one, especially with regards to communities that depend on NTCL for essential supplies.

"We're doing the best we can and taking that into account," he said. "We want to take care of people and our employees through this process."

Court documents detail how bad the situation has become.

"The statement of operations for NTCL shows an aggregate net loss from operations for the 2015 fiscal year. NTCL's 2015 loss from operations alone was $5,401,000. Although certain efficiencies have been realized in the past six months, it is anticipated that NTCL will continue to lose significant amounts of money absent the proposed restructuring being developed in these proceedings," state court documents filed in the name of Kyle Barsi, NTCL's vice-president of finance.

On April 27, the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta granted NTCL protection under the act for an initial 30 days to expire on May 27, and that could be extended.

NTCL will continue to operate but will be supervised by a court-appointed monitor PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. which will oversee operations, liaise with creditors and help develop a restructuring plan.

The Inuvialuit Development Corporation is an investment company wholly owned by the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. Court documents say NTCL owes the development corporation $32 million in loans. NTCL also has $72 million in debt to banks.

- with files from Paul Bickford and Josh Long

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