THE Government of Canada funded Improved Access to Justice in the Caribbean (IMPACT Justice) Project hosted a ‘Meeting to Discuss the IMPACT Justice Draft Model Insolvency Bill’ on January 17-18, 2020 at the Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business & Management at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. The IMPACT Justice Project is implemented from within the Caribbean Law Institute Centre, Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus.
The meeting was a follow up to a wider stakeholder consultation held on October 7th and 8th in 2019. This initiative resulted from a request by the Government of Barbados for assistance in updating and modernising its Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, 2002. As IMPACT Justice is a regional justice sector project, countries with an interest in updating their legislation were invited to be party to the meeting, with Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago taking up the offer to be a part of the IMPACT Justice Insolvency Legislation Committee.
The committee examined the draft bill clause-by-clause, assessing the relevance of the clauses to local contexts and suggesting ideas for how the legislation could be better amended to meet the needs of the respective countries. The committee aimed not only to correct deficiencies in the current legislation, but also to provide the best possible regime for the respective countries that takes into account international best practice and local nuances. The committee will continue to meet until the bill is deemed to have achieved the objective of providing an appropriate and effective regime for bankruptcy and insolvency in Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.
The meeting was chaired by Professor Velma Newton, Regional Project Director of IMPACT Justice and was attended by Madam Justice Jacqueline Cornelius, High Court Judge in Barbados; Ian Macintyre, S.C., Chief Parliamentary Counsel in Trinidad and Tobago; Ester Springer, Supervisor of Insolvency in Barbados; Karen Seebaran-Blondet, Supervisor of Insolvency in Trinidad and Tobago; Sharda Bollers, Supervisor of Insolvency in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Geshell Peters, Deputy Supervisor of Insolvency in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Alrick Scott, Q.C., Attorney-at-Law in Barbados; Anthony Audain, Q.C., Attorney-at-Law in Barbados; Christopher Sambrano, Partner at EY in Barbados; and Jamar Payne, Project Officer, IMPACT Justice.