The government is putting an end to the 21-year-old Drive Clean program. Premier Ford, Environment Minister Rod Phillips and Transportation Minister John Yakabuski said Friday morning that the provincial government will end the mandatory emissions test for passenger vehicles next April. Drive Clean was brought in by the Conservative government in 1999 to curb polluting vehicles, a major source of smog. But as cars got cleaner and cleaner, the then $35 test became an irritant for drivers especially after it was revealed by the auditor general of Ontario that the vast majority of vehicles pass and the worst polluting vehicles were exempt from testing.
US SAYS MUSK FIBS
Tesla without Elon Musk at the wheel? To many of the electric car maker’s customers and investors that would be unthinkable. But that’s what the US Securities and Exchange Commission wants. It has asked a federal court to oust Musk as Tesla’s chairman and CEO, alleging he committed securities fraud with false statements about plans to take the company private. The agency said in a complaint Thursday that Musk falsely claimed in an August 7 statement on Twitter that funding had been secured for Tesla Inc. to go private at $420 per share, a substantial premium over the stock price at the time.
SHOPIFY ME GREEN
Shopify Inc. will invest as much as half-a-billion dollars into its forthcoming Toronto office, in a large downtown development where it plans to house thousands of new employees, says the Globe and Mail. The Ottawa-based company’s neon-green shopping-bag beacon is expected to top the 38-storey skyscraper at the corner of Front Street West and Spadina Avenue when The Well complex, jointly owned by Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT, opens in 2022. Shopify’s investment and its anchor-tenant logo rights are part of a 15-year deal that Michael Scace, who brokered the transaction, said is one of the biggest-ever completed in the King West market on the edge of Toronto’s downtown core.
