• Alexandria
• Hawkesbury
• Dunvegan
• Vankleek Hill
• L’Orignal

The company reported roughly $16 million in annual sales and about 156 employees (including 41 temporary foreign workers) at the time of filing.

Court materials and reporting cite debts including about $1.6 million to the Canada Revenue Agency, $1 million to Scotiabank, and $600,000 to the Business Development Bank of Canada.

The franchisor (TDL Group) had issued a default notice, and the lender had demanded repayment.

In an affidavit, Burke attributed the difficulties to multiple factors: weaker pandemic-era sales, opening three restaurants during the pandemic (which the company said cost it roughly $500,000 in wage-subsidy support), loss of construction financing for the Vankleek Hill site (requiring about $1.2 million to be funded from operations), labour shortages in smaller communities, higher interest rates, resulting tax arrears that hindered refinancing, and (in some accounts) trade tensions/tariffs.

Some reporting, drawing on Blacklock’s Reporter coverage of the filings, also notes the company’s reference to federal restrictions on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and high reliance on temporary foreign workers at certain sites (e.g., 19 of 23 staff at the Alexandria location and 15 of 25 at Dunvegan). Tim Hortons has stated that the situation is extremely rare, does not reflect the financial viability of the restaurants or typical staffing patterns across its system, and that it expects the locations to continue under new ownership. Tim Hortons has been under heavy fire this year for its practice of hiring foreign workers over Canadians but has argued there are not enough Canadians willing to work at Timmies.

The self-proclaimed food professor Sylvain Charlebois, who teaches at Dalhousie University,  argued; “If your business depends on cheap labour to survive, you need a different business model.”