How to make the deal and enforce it: Mastering the entire secured debt lifecycle with OsgoodePD

A comprehensive new certificate program will help lawyers get a handle on the entire secured debt lifecycle.

The Osgoode Certificate in Commercial Lending, Enforcement and Restructuring brings together the transactional and disputes sides of the secured finance practice, leading attendees through the structuring, documentation and execution of a secured debt deal, all the way to potentially associated enforcement, restructuring and insolvency proceedings.

The optional bundled certificate is open to attendees who complete both Osgoode Professional Development’s long-standing Intensive Short Course in Secured Lending and Debt Finance 2026 and the newer Intensive Short Course in Secured Debt Enforcement and Insolvency Practice 2026.

“We still offer each course as a standalone, but for those who want the full picture, this is the entire secured debt lifecycle, from start to finish,” says Stephen M Ahad, the program lawyer for the new certificate program.

Chris Burr, who serves as co-Program Chair of the Intensive Short Course in Secured Debt Enforcement and Insolvency Practice, is part of a minority of lawyers whose career has straddled both ends of the secured debt spectrum.  

Early in his career at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, Burr got some experience working for banking clients to set up secured debt structures, before a short stint as in-house counsel for Dragons’ Den star Arlene Dickinson’s venture capital firm.

Since returning to Blakes, where he is now a partner in the firm’s Restructuring and Insolvency group, Burr has spent the last decade working exclusively on the enforcement side, largely acting for creditors in a variety of complex corporate restructuring and insolvency litigation matters.

Still, Burr says that attendees don’t need to have direct experience at both ends of the secured debt lifecycle in order to benefit from bundling the intensive programs and earning the full Osgoode Certificate in Commercial Lending, Enforcement and Restructuring.

“These are two very complementary programs. If you’re interested or practising in lending at the front end, it’s incredibly useful to understand what happens if things go bad further down the line. When you can properly forecast or predict the way things could deteriorate, it helps you to build protection into the agreement,” he says. “The inverse is also true. When you work on enforcement, typically you’re inheriting someone else’s credit agreement, which might have been in place for five or six years before a change in the market. It helps to understand why the agreement says what it says and what the parties intended to accomplish.”   

A regular speaker for various OsgoodePD courses, including The Osgoode Certificate in Construction Law, Burr was a natural choice as Program Chair for last year’s inaugural Intensive Short Course in Secured Debt Enforcement. The 2026 version takes place live on Nov. 9 and 10, with options to attend in-person or online. It will again feature experienced practitioners and judges, who will help attendees develop the insight, strategic perspective and practical tools they need to effectively manage risk and protect their clients’ interests in high-stakes insolvency and enforcement matters.

The companion Intensive Short Course in Secured Lending and Debt Finance has a much longer history at OsgoodePD, having run annually for close to two decades. For most of those years, Eric Belli-Bivar has been at the helm as Program Chair.

Belli-Bivar has spent more than 30 years on Bay Street, acting for lenders, borrowers, funds, ‎sponsors, regulated financial entities and international financial ‎institutions in a variety of debt and finance matters – most recently at DLA Piper (Canada) LLP, where he has spent the past decade as a partner in its Finance Group. 

After starting out on the Intensive Short Course in Secured Lending and Debt Finance as a speaker, Belli-Bivar put his stamp on it as Program Chair by restructuring the agenda around the chronology of a transaction, so that each session in the two-day program advances logically from the last.

The 2026 edition, which offers both live online and in-person options on Nov. 26 and 27, starts with an overview of the Canadian debt financing market led by senior bankers at some of the country’s largest financial institutions.

“That sets the stage for our expert speakers to get into the details of a secured loan transaction. We start with the first interactions and take it through to closing,” says Belli-Bivar, adding that he sees the decision to bundle the secured lending and debt enforcement as a welcome extension of his chronological approach.

As well as banking and finance lawyers in private practice and in-house roles, he says the program is also a popular choice among a wide variety of professionals without legal training, including financial advisors, insolvency trustees and business executives who want to deepen their understanding of secured lending and enforcement in Canada.

“We try to give them practical, hands-on, transferable skills and training that they can apply to their jobs immediately,” Belli-Bivar says.  

One former attendee of the transaction-focused secured lending intensive course is Heather Fisher, who is now Burr’s co-Program Chair on its counterpart, the secured debt enforcement intensive short course.

Although she has practised almost exclusively in commercial litigation – with a focus on insolvency and restructuring – since her 2018 call to the bar, Fisher makes an effort to stay up to date on transaction trends in the field.

“Insolvency is something of a hybrid practice, so it’s important to understand the solicitor side and stay up to speed on what’s in the market, even if you’re not steeped in it from day to day,” says Fisher, a partner in the Toronto office of Gowling WLG.

According to Fisher, the practical focus of the course, which makes heavy use of scenario-based exercises to explore secured debt issues, gives mid-career practitioners a valuable opportunity to develop the kind of judgement that they need to succeed in the field.

“Great judgement takes time to develop and in this day and age, with the use of artificial intelligence growing and the number of articling positions shrinking, it’s harder than ever to build,” Fisher says. “The idea here is that you learn to exercise this good judgement across the spectrum of secured debt.”

To be eligible for The Osgoode Certificate in Commercial Lending, Enforcement and Restructuring, attendees must complete the 2026 editions of both the Intensive Short Course in Secured Lending and Debt Finance and the Intensive Short Course in Secured Debt Enforcement and Insolvency Practice. There will be a second chance to complete each intensive course via online replays, proceeding in January 2027.

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