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In This Volume

  • 1 (1) In this Act:
  • “account” means a monetary obligation not evidenced by chattel paper or an instrument, whether or not the obligation has been earned by performance, but does not include investment property;
  • “advance” means the payment of money, the provision of credit or the giving of value and includes any liability of the debtor to pay any interest, credit costs or other charges or costs payable by the debtor in connection with an advance or the enforcement of a security interest securing an advance;
  • “building materials” means materials that are incorporated into a building and includes goods attached to a building so that their removal
  • (a) would necessarily involve the dislocation or destruction of some other part of the building and cause substantial damage to the building apart from the loss of value of the building resulting from the removal, or
  • (b) would result in the weakening of the structure of the building or the exposure of the building to weather damage or deterioration,
  • but does not include
  • (c) heating, air conditioning or conveyancing devices, or
  • (d) machinery installed in a building or on land for use in carrying on an activity inside the building or on the land;
  • “chattel paper” means one or more writings that evidence both a monetary obligation and a security interest in, or a lease of, specific goods or specific goods and accessions;
  • “collateral” means personal property that is subject to a security interest;
  • “court” means the Supreme Court;
  • “creditor” includes an assignee for the benefit of a creditor, an executor, administrator or committee of a creditor;
  • “crops” means crops, whether matured or otherwise, and whether naturally grown or planted, attached to land by roots or forming parts of trees or plants attached to land, and includes only trees that
  • (a) are being grown as nursery stock,
  • (b) are being grown for uses other than the production of lumber and wood products, or
  • (c) are intended to be replanted in another location for the purpose of reforestation;
  • “debtor” means
  • (a) a person who owes payment or performance of an obligation secured, whether or not that person owns or has rights in the collateral,
  • (b) a person who receives goods from another person under a commercial consignment,
  • (c) a lessee under a lease for a term of more than one year,
  • (d) a transferor of an account or chattel paper,
  • (e) in sections 17, 24, 26, 58, 59(14), 61(8) and 69, a transferee of or successor to the interest of a person referred to in paragraph (a), or
  • (f) if the person referred to in paragraph (a) and the owner of the collateral are not the same person,
    • (i) if the term debtor is used in a provision dealing with the collateral, an owner of the collateral,
    • (ii) if the term debtor is used in a provision dealing with the obligation, the obligor, and
    • (iii) if the context permits, both the owner and the obligor;
  • “fixture” does not include building materials;
  • “goods” means tangible personal property, fixtures, crops and the unborn young of animals, but does not include chattel paper, a document of title, an instrument, a security, money, trees other than crops until the trees are severed, or minerals or hydrocarbons until they are extracted;
  • “instrument” means
  • (a) a bill of exchange, note or cheque within the meaning of the Bills of Exchange Act (Canada),
  • (b) any other writing that evidences a right to payment of money and is of a type that in the ordinary course of business is transferred by delivery with any necessary endorsement or assignment, or
  • (c) a letter of credit or an advice of credit if the letter of credit or advice of credit states on it that it must be surrendered on claiming payment under it,
  • but does not include
  • (d) chattel paper, a document of title or investment property, or
  • (e) a bond, debenture or similar document evidencing an obligation secured, in whole or in part, by a mortgage of an interest in land unless the interest being mortgaged is, itself, a mortgage of land;
  • “licence” means a right, whether or not exclusive,
  • (a) to manufacture, produce, sell, transport, grow, harvest or otherwise deal with personal property,
  • (b) to provide services,
  • (c) to acquire personal property,
  • (d) to harvest timber, or grow and harvest Christmas trees, under an agreement referred to in section 12 of the Forest Act, or
  • (e) to harvest timber under a pulpwood agreement as defined in section 1 of the Forest Act, that is transferrable by the licensee with or without restriction or the consent of the licensor, and includes a licence that is subject to cancellation and reissuance by the licensor to another party at the request of either the licensee or the secured party;
  • “money” means a medium of exchange
  • (a) authorized by the Parliament of Canada, or
  • (b) authorized or adopted by a foreign government as part of its currency;
  • “obligation secured” means, when determining the amount payable under a lease that secures payment or performance of an obligation,
  • (a) the amount originally contracted to be paid under the lease,
  • (b) any other amount payable in accordance with the terms of the lease, and
  • (c) any other amount required to be paid by the lessee to obtain ownership of the collateral,
  • less any amount paid before the determination;
  • “prior security interest” means an interest created, reserved or provided for by a valid security agreement or other transaction made before this section comes into force that is a security interest within the meaning of this Act and to which this Act would have applied if it had been in force at the time the security agreement or other transaction was entered into;
  • “purchase” means taking by sale, lease, discount, assignment, negotiation, mortgage, pledge, lien, issue, reissue, gift or any other consensual transaction creating an interest in property;
  • “purchase money security interest” means
  • (a) a security interest taken in collateral, other than investment property, to the extent that it secures payment of all or part of its purchase price,
  • (b) a security interest taken in collateral, other than investment property, by a person who gives value for the purpose of enabling the debtor to acquire rights in the collateral, to the extent that the value is applied to acquire the rights,
  • (c) the interest of a lessor of goods under a lease for a term of more than one year, and
  • (d) the interest of a person who delivers goods to another person under a commercial consignment,
  • but does not include a transaction of sale by and lease back to the seller and, for the purposes of this definition, “purchase price” and “value” include credit charges or interest payable for the purchase or loan credit;
  • “receiver” includes receiver-manager;
  • “secured party” means
  • (a) a person who has a security interest,
  • (b) a person who holds a security interest for the benefit of another person, and
  • (c) the trustee, if a security interest is embodied in a trust indenture;
  • “security” has the same meaning as in the Securities Transfer Act;
  • “security agreement” means an agreement that creates or provides for a security interest and, if the context permits, includes
  • (a) an agreement that provides for a prior security interest, and
  • (b) writing that evidences a security agreement;
  • “security interest” means
  • (a) an interest in goods, chattel paper, investment property, a document of title, an instrument, money or an intangible that secures payment or performance of an obligation, but does not include the interest of a seller who has shipped goods to a buyer under a negotiable bill of lading or its equivalent to the order of the seller or to the order of an agent of the seller, unless the parties have otherwise evidenced an intention to create or provide for a security interest in the goods, and
  • (b) the interest of
    • (i) a transferee arising from the transfer of an account or a transfer of chattel paper,
    • (ii) a person who delivers goods to another person under a commercial consignment, and
    • (iii) a lessor under a lease for a term of more than one year,
  • whether or not the interest secures payment or performance of an obligation;
  • “value” means any consideration sufficient to support a simple contract, and includes an antecedent debt or liability.

1989-36-1; 1990-11-1, 2; 1990-25-53; 1992-48-1, effective September 11, 1992 (B.C. Reg. 357/92); 2007-10-113, effective July 1, 2007 (B.C. Reg. 128/2007); 2011-23-1, effective September 1, 2012 (B.C. Reg. 182/2012); 2019-11-18.

These excerpts from s. 1 apply to the sections of the Personal Property Security Act cited in these materials.

REGULATIONS

“Personal Property”

See s. 1(3), (4), and (5) of the Personal Property Security Regulation, B.C. Reg. 227/2002, which provides:

  • (3) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (4) and whether or not that the fixture or crop remains part of the land to which it is affixed or attached and that a dealing with land is a dealing with the fixtures and crops affixed or attached to the land, “personal property” in the Act [the Personal Property Security Act] and this regulation is conclusively deemed to include a fixture or crop for all purposes related to a security interest in the fixture or crop including, without limiting this, the validity, attachment, perfection, priority, subordination, enforceability or realization of, or other dealing with, that security interest.
  • (4) Subsection (3) does not apply
  • (a) for any purpose other than a purpose of the Act and this regulation,
  • (b) to an interest that is created by words that also create or transfer an interest in the land to which the fixture or crop is affixed or attached, or
  • (c) to the creation of an interest in a fixture or crop by the granting of a lease of the land to which the fixture or crop is affixed or attached.
  • (5) For the purpose of subsection (4)(b), words that create an interest in a fixture or crop are not “words that also create or transfer an interest in the land to which the fixture or crop is affixed or attached” merely because the words creating the interest in the fixture or crop are contained in a document that also contains other words that create or transfer an interest in the land.