ADDITIONAL AMENDMENTS By Patricia Marshall Additional Administrative Amendments to WEPPA A s some readers may know, representatives from Service Canada have been busy speaking to various Licensed Insol- vency Trustees (LITs) and administrators across the country for the last year or so, about the Wage Earner Protection Program Act (WEPPA). They have held several conference calls in small groups of 8-10 people, from large and small firms. As an attendee to these calls, I found them to be very active listeners on many aspects of the program, from the tiniest details to the larger, broader issues. The accompanying article to this one highlights the more significant changes, however, some additional administrative changes noted below may also pique practitioners' interests: •  The monthly statement Trustees receive from WEPP is being updated to also reflect the estate name. Currently, it only reflects an estate number. •  The WEPP tombstone page (used to set up a file initially on the WEPP website) is being updated to allow a firm's Corporate License number to be used, instead of an individual's Trustee License number. •  For a debtor company in both bankruptcy and receivership, it was reiterated on our last call that two Trustee Information Forms (TIF) should be filed. Section 7(2) of the WEPPA states that "the amount that may be paid is the greater of the amount determined in respect of the bankruptcy and the amount determined in respect of the receivership". Consider the example of a receivership in December and a bankruptcy in January (when a new WEPP maximum payment would normally be set) that an employee's benefit under WEPP could increase. As such, Trustees need to be aware that two TIF forms should be filed, one for each proceeding, in order for WEPP to confirm the greater payment that an employee may be eligible for. An employee's claim amount may not change, but they may be eligible for a greater payment from WEPP. •  The TIF fields are being updated. There are several changes coming, but likely the largest change that Trustees or Receivers will notice is that new fields will reflect all aspects of an employee's claim, not just certain aspects of an employee's claim. For example, contents of a BIA claim may contain: -  Secured and unsecured wages -  Secured and unsecured vacation pay -  Secured and unsecured expenses (disbursements of a travelling salesman) -  Termination or severance pay - Other And, a TIF form currently asks for: - Eligible wages -  Eligible vacation pay - Eligible expenses (disbursements of a travelling salesman) -  Termination or severance pay The new TIF will more reflect all of the BIA components and then ask, of those components, what has the Trustee or Receiver paid? Service Canada will get a more complete picture of an employee's claim. Some of the above changes may already be reflected in your dealings with WEPP; the rest will be reflected in the (hopefully) near future. Although it has taken time to enact some of these long-requested changes, I find it encouraging that Service Canada is receptive to our concerns. RS 42 Rebuilding Success Spring/Summer2019