What’s New: In Brief (May 21, 2008)

The Autorit des marches financiers (AMF) ordered Courtage d’assurance Claude Htu inc. to pay a Cdn$3,000 penalty for failure to file financial statements.
The brokerage firm was ordered to pay the penalty after it belatedly filed financial statements for fiscal year 2004-05, further to a notice served by the AMF dated Nov. 27, 2006.
The AMF served notice under s. 117 of the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services.
The AMF said it served the notice after repeated requests for the information made by both the Chambre de l’assurance de dommages and the AMF, as well as an undertaking the firm made in July 2006 to provide the information requested.

The “microcar” Smart Fortwo has earned the top rating for front and side crash protection, and its seat/head restraints earned a rating of “acceptable” for protection against whiplash in rear impacts from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Weighing about 1,800 pounds, the Smart is the smallest car in Canada. It is more than three feet shorter and almost 700 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper, an IIHS release says.
The Smart weighs roughly one-third as much as one of the heaviest vehicles tested by the IIHS, the BMW X5.
“The Smart mostly lacks a front-end crush zone, which is a key component in reducing injury risk in serious frontal crashes,” an IIHS release says. To compensate for the lack of front-end crush space, the Smart’s restraint system does more of the work of absorbing energy as occupants “ride down” a crash, it adds.
“All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better,” said Adrian Lund, IIHS president. “But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package.”