The Winnipeg real estate market set a record for the value of homes sold in November, totalling $166.3 million.

That was a 42 per cent increase over November 2008, which rang in at $116.9 million, according to the Winnipeg Realtors Association (WRA).

In terms of the number of properties sold, the WRA said November 2009 was the second best in the association’s 106-year-history.

The statistics are a dramatic improvement over the same time in 2008, when one of the worst sales months was recorded and the fear about the recession was at its height.

A total of 837 properties were sold through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in November 2009, an increase of 28 per cent over the previous year when 656 properties were sold, the WRA stated in a press release.

Only November 2007 was better for sales, and that was by only 43 properties.

Peter Squire, a market analyst for the Winnipeg Real Estate Board, chalks up the spike to low interest rates, growing consumer confidence and an array of attractions that make Winnipeg a more desirable city in which to live.

“Our unemployment numbers in November show that we’re virtually tied with Saskatchewan for the lowest unemployment in the country. And . . . there are a lot of projects and a lot of exciting things happening like the [construction of the] human rights museum and the Ikea development,” he said.

The average days on the market for sales of residential detached listings in November 2009 was 29, three days quicker than this time last year.

Regulators should lift restrictions on foreigners trading in Canadian stocks to boost the nation’s international status, the head of Canada’s largest stock market said Monday.

Current rules concerning stock trading don’t make sense for a country that claims it wants to compete internationally, TMX Group chief executive officer Tom Kloet told an audience at the Canadian Club of Toronto.

Canadian stock exchanges used to be owned as a collective by different dealers and brokerages. In 2000, regulators “demutualized” the industry and the Toronto Stock Exchange was put under the control of an independent company, TMX Group Inc.

The company competes with international stock exchanges to trade the stocks of public companies. But it’s not able to compete on a level playing field, Kloet said, because as it stands under current Canadian law, an American cannot directly purchase shares on Canadian exchanges.

“It’s time that we had free trade in securities just as we have free trade in goods – and that begins with a mutual recognition of one another’s regulatory systems. We stand prepared to offer our assistance to government and other bodies in this effort,” he said.

The law fragments the securities market and if the practice continues, it will stifle development, he said. Changes should start between Canada and the United States before moving on to other jurisdictions, Kloet said.

Goal should be bigger share of global market

“The goal, therefore, should not be to fragment our own market but to win a bigger share of the global market,” he said.

Canadian business leaders need to do a better job of being ambassadors for Canada’s economy overseas, Kloet said, adding that the upcoming G8 and G20 conferences and Vancouver Olympics present opportunities to put Canada’s economy front and centre on the world stage.

“I think too many of us have seen ourselves as builders of businesses rather than as ambassadors for this country,” he said. “But at a time when other nations are aggressively marketing themselves, when globalization has made it possible to set up a business almost anywhere, the two have to go hand in hand.”

Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi is pictured at his first trial for fraud in November 2008. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail for market-rigging. The 2003 failure of his dairy empire was Europe’s biggest bankruptcy at the time. (Antonio Calanni/Associated Press)

Tax police in Italy have seized a secret stash of masterpieces, said to be worth $150 million US, from the founder of the collapsed dairy conglomerate Parmalat.

Police in the city of Parma, located about 200 kilometres southeast of Milan, showed the results of their investigation to reporters on Saturday at the headquarters of the milk empire of Calisto Tanzi.

Among the 19 works unearthed were pieces by the likes of Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh and Modigliani.

Tanzi was convicted of market-rigging in 2008 in wake of the 2003 collapse of Parmalat.

Authorities say the executive was largely responsible for what was termed Europe’s biggest bankruptcy at the time. Many investors lost their life savings.

Tanzi was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for fraud. His trial on other charges ? fraudulent bankruptcy ? is underway in Parma.

Earlier this week, Tanzi denied he had a secret art collection.

Police said they tracked down the treasure trove using phone interceptions.

Parma prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said officials believed at least one of the paintings was about to be sold. “We got lucky. We learned that there were negotiations underway to sell one of the paintings,” said Laguardia.

Tax police say it’s likely all of the paintings were about to be sold.

Police say their phone tapping targeted Tanzi’s son-in-law, Stefano Strini, who is now under investigation for handling the artwork.

They say Strini led them to three apartments in Parma, belonging to friends of the family.

With files from The Associated Press

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Canada added 79,000 jobs last month as the country’s unemployment rate dipped 0.1 percentage points to 8.5 per cent.

A student at checks out a bulletin board with job postings in October. The Canadian economy added 79,000 jobs in November, Statistics Canada said.(Al Behrman/Associated Press)

Statistics Canada said Friday that full-time employment increased by 39,000 in November, the third consecutive monthly increase, while part-time employment grew by 40,000, following two months of declines.

The job growth far surpassed the consensus expectations of economists, who had been projecting the creation of 15,000 jobs, and for the unemployment rate to rise to 8.7 per cent.

Calling the jobs report “stunning,” a TD Economics report took particular note of how broad-based the gains were.

“We can’t help but be encouraged by the fact that all provinces [except Manitoba, and marginally so] were posting employment gains as of November.”

“Unless productivity cratered, the data suggest decent and regionally based gains in real GDP in Q4,” the report said.

In October, the country shed 43,200 jobs as the national unemployment rate came in at 8.6 per cent.

Statistics Canada said almost all the job growth last month was attributable to the service sector, which added 73,000 jobs. Within that sector, roughly 38,000 positions were created in educational services.

Employment in the goods-producing sector showed little change in November.

In the provinces

Ontario added 27,000 jobs in November ? the largest gain in the province since September 2008. The province’s unemployment rate, however, remained unchanged at 9.3 per cent.

In Quebec, employment grew by 21,000 in November, pushing the province’s unemployment rate down 0.4 percentage points to 8.1 per cent.

Employment in Alberta rose by 13,000 last month, the largest monthly increase in the province since October 2008.

The Royal Bank of Canada was cautiously optimistic on the report, but was not prepared to downplay the threat of unemployment moving forward.

“The labour data have been very volatile but, on net, 66,500 jobs were created in the three months to November, which supports our call for more robust growth in the fourth quarter,” RBC economist Dawn Desjardins said.

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New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham has fired back at the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador over the proposed sale of NB Power.

Graham says Danny Williams should stop engaging in “cheap publicity stunts” to try to stop the $4.8-billion deal between NB Power and Hydro-Québec.

On Thursday, during a speech in Calgary to a business group, Williams said Hydro-Québec will use the New Brunswick grid to block his province from selling electricity into the U.S. He recently gave a similar speech in New York.

‘Danny Williams is calling on us to provide an open market ? something that is very clearly a part of the proposed agreement already ? when he does not even practise what he preaches.’?N.B. Premier Shawn Graham

Graham described Williams’s position as “ironic,” saying Newfoundland doesn’t treat New Brunswick fairly in bidding on offshore oil contracts.

“Danny Williams is calling on us to provide an open market ? something that is very clearly a part of the proposed agreement already ? when he does not even practise what he preaches,” Graham said Friday during a news conference.

“In Newfoundland’s offshore projects, New Brunswick companies line up ? this is important to note, they line up ? behind Newfoundland providers for scraps left by local preferences on construction projects and labour needs.”

Williams has asked Graham for a written guarantee that Newfoundland will be able to build a transmission line through New Brunswick.

Graham said New Brunswick is open to that if Newfoundland follows the rules. But he also said Williams’s demand for agreements before the NB Power sale closes amounts to a request for special treatment that the rules don’t allow.

Under the proposed deal, expected to be completed in March, Hydro-Québec would pay $4.8 billion for most of NB Power’s assets, a sum that would wipe out the utility’s debt, Graham has said.

In addition, industrial power rates would be reduced by about 30 per cent, to the same level currently paid by Quebec companies, while residential customers would have their rates frozen for five years.

The New Brunswick government values the rate savings at $5 billion.

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Shares in Research In Motion Ltd. fell more than two per cent Thursday on reports that Nebraska-based Prism Technologies LLC has filed a patent infringement complaint against the BlackBerry maker.

Prism’s complaint against the Waterloo, Ont.-based company could eventually result in its BlackBerry smartphones being banned from the American market.

Research I Motion’s 3-month chart

RIM shares in the BlackBerry maker closed down $1.35 at $61.53 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Prism filed the complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington.

Prism claimed RIM’s BlackBerry devices, software and servers violate its patent for a technology that controls access to protected, electronically stored data by a device using the internet. The claim singles out the BlackBerry Curve 8330, a top-selling consumer smartphone.

RIM is already fighting a lawsuit launched by Prism in a federal court in Nebraska.

Lyle Vander Schaaff, a patent lawyer with Bryan Cave in Washington, told Bloomberg that Prism may be trying to force RIM into settling the lawsuit by raising the threat of an import ban, which is within the commission’s powers.

Last month, rival companies Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices reached an agreement over various patent disputes, which includes a five-year patent sharing arrangement.

Earlier this year, RIM settled a patent dispute with California-based Visto Corp., now renamed Good Technology, and agreed to pay the company $267.5 million US.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Canada’s largest bank has reported strong financial results for its fourth quarter and 2009 financial year.

Royal Bank of Canada saw its net income and revenues rise in the three months ended Oct. 31 on strong performance from its capital markets, Canadian banking and wealth management sectors.

The Toronto-based bank had net income of $1.2 billion for the quarter. That was up from year-ago profit of $1.1 billion.

Revenue for the quarter totalled $7.5 billion, up from $5.1 billion last year.

Diluted net earnings per share were 82 cents for the quarter, compared to 81 cents in last year’s fourth quarter.

For fiscal 2009, RBC recorded revenue of $29.1 billion, up from $21.6 billion in the previous year. Annual net income was $3.9 billion, down from $4.6 billion in 2008.

The Canadian Press, 2009

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Livent co-founder Garth Drabinsky arrives at the Superior Court in Toronto on March 25. He is working on new theatre projects while free on appeal.(Chris Young/Canadian Press)

Garth Drabinsky, the Toronto theatre impresario who is out of jail pending an appeal on his convictions for fraud and forgery, is planning a comeback to the stage.

According to reports in Toronto newspapers, Drabinsky is planning three theatre projects to hit Canadian stages in 2010 and 2011.

By then he could be serving time for the convictions related to his Livent Inc. theatre operations in the 1990s.

Drabinsky and partner Myron Gottlieb were found guilty on fraud and forgery charges in March, with an Ontario judge saying they “systemically manipulated the books” at Livent.

Drabinsky and Gottlieb received prison sentences of seven and six years respectively, but are free pending an appeal of their convictions.

According to the Toronto Star, both are involved in three new theatre productions:

Barrymore, a play based on the life of actor John Barrymore, to star Christopher Plummer.Finian’s Rainbow, a musical to star Colm Wilkinson, star of Phantom of the Opera.Kiss of the Spider Woman, in an all-black revival.

Livent produced Spider Woman in the 1990s in Toronto.

Plummer played Barrymore for the first time at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He went on to win a Tony Award for his portrayal of Barrymore on Broadway, in a 1996 production backed by Drabinsky.

Drabinsky is reported to have partners in Toronto and New York willing to back his new theatre enterprises.

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Provinces and municipalities have less than two months to finalize funding requests for stimulus projects before federal cash is withdrawn, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Wednesday.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unveiled the government’s latest report on the economic action plan Wednesday.(Jim Ross/Canadian Press)

According to the government’s latest quarterly economic report, 97 per cent of the $62 billion worth of stimulus spending Ottawa pledged has been committed thus far. To qualify for federal funding, projects must be completed by March 2011.

“In order to meet these goals, a deadline of Jan. 29, 2010 has been set for partner authorities to secure firm commitments to implement projects,” the report reads.

“If all funding for these initiatives has not been allocated by this date, the government will reallocate funding to other initiatives or allow funds to lapse,” it warns.

“This plan was not created for eternal life,” Flaherty said at a speech at the University of Winnipeg. “So we have provided a compelling incentive to make those projects happen.”

Earlier, Prime Minister Stephen Harper showed reporters on his trade mission to China the contents of the government’s fourth quarterly report on its economic recovery plan. The report was formally released by the Finance Department later in the day.

“This is a strict use-it-or-lose-it approach [and] fair warning to all of our partners across the country,” Flaherty said.

“Our economic action plan is doing what it was meant to do ? providing unprecedented short term stimulus,” he said. “And we have gotten this boost into the Canadian economy in record time.”

Flaherty said 12,000 stimulus projects have been announced to date, and 8,000 of them are underway.

The Finance Department estimates that close to 70 per cent of the 2009-10 stimulus is flowing in the economy. But this figure represents “an estimate of economic activity” as opposed to actual federal payments made, the department notes.

Critics dismiss that notion, saying the stimulus plan has had very little impact on the economy thus far.

“It’s a report full of weasel words that tries to hide the truth from Canadians,” Liberal finance critic John McCallum said.

“Yes, 90 per cent plus of the money has been committed, but we learned yesterday from the government’s own numbers that for only seven per cent of the infrastructure projects has construction actually started.”

The Liberal party claims to have done research showing that of a sample of 1,000 stimulus projects, just 12 per cent were generating any jobs by September.

On Monday, Statistics Canada reported that the economy expanded 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, the first quarterly gain since the third quarter of 2008.

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Ed Clark, TD Bank’s CEO, says the economy will remain lacklustre for the foreseeable future.(Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

Despite flat profits overall, a strong performance by TD Bank’s core Canadian retail division helped it beat analyst expectations for the fourth quarter.

The Toronto-based bank on Thursday reported net income of $1.01 billion during the three months up to Oct. 31, 2009. That’s slightly down from $1.014 billion during the same period a year earlier.

But a number of one-time earnings helped push adjusted earnings to a record $1.3 billion or $1.46 a share, up from $665 million a year earlier. That bettered the $1.30 a share that analysts were expecting, according to Thomson Reuters.

“Market and economic conditions were challenging during the year, but they also created opportunities to take advantage of our position of strength,? TD president Ed Clark said.

The bank’s Canadian personal and commercial banking posted strong earnings of $622 million in the fourth quarter, up four per cent from the same period last year.

That was offset by an eight per cent profit drop in the wealth management division.

TD’s provision for credit losses nearly doubled to $521 million compared with the year-earlier period, but was down from the prior quarter.

?The market has bounced back more strongly than we would have thought, but we think underlying economic conditions will remain lacklustre for the foreseeable future,” Clark warned.

Total revenue was $4.7 billion in the three months ended Oct. 31, up from $3.6 billion a year earlier.

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