The national average selling price for existing homes last month was about 32 percent higher than in March 2020, and owners in communities across Canada are feeling the benefits, The Globe and Mail reported. Average prices in Chilliwack, B.C., Bancroft, Ont., and Yarmouth, N.S., were at least $100,000 higher than a year earlier, right in line with big cities such as Vancouver. By handing owners these lottery-like gains in equity, the housing market has validated the almost religious belief of Canadians that owning a house is the foundation of financial success.

The three-month trial of a lawsuit against Toronto-Dominion Bank, in which the liquidators of the collapsed Antigua bank of former Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford are seeking $4.5 billion in damages, is expected to end on Wednesday, Reuters reported. A written judgment from the court is expected in a few months. In closing arguments at the Ontario Superior Court, lawyers for the court-appointed joint liquidators of Stanford International Bank (SIB) alleged negligence and "knowing assistance" by TD in providing a correspondent banking account that Stanford used to perpetuate fraud.

Interjet shareholders unanimously voted to approve a filing for bankruptcy protection, a move that would enable the Mexican airline to resume payments to employees that have been frozen for several months, Bloomberg reported. Alejandro del Valle, who took a 90% stake in the carrier late last year, led discussions over the filing with former majority owners and founders Miguel Aleman Magnani and his father, Miguel Aleman Velasco. Interjet is the second Mexican airline to file for bankruptcy protection since the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

Apartment building owners in major Canadian cities are quietly selling billions of dollars worth of properties at premium valuations, despite the pandemic, with pension funds, private equity firms and other investors desperate to swallow large portfolios that rarely hit the market, The Globe and Mail reported.

Mexico’s bill to increase government controls over the fuel market won final congressional approval in the latest blow to the country’s historic opening up of the energy industry, Bloomberg News reported.