Here are five things you need to know this morning:

Jobs numbers: Canada’s job numbers for March landed with a thud this morning, with Statistics Canada reporting that the economy lost about 2,200 jobs last month, and the jobless rate ticked up three points to 6.1 per cent. In an economy with 20 million workers, a loss of 2,000 jobs is essentially no change, but when there are 60,000 more people looking for work, it’s not an encouraging picture for the economy. Canada’s job numbers look especially underwhelming when compared to the ones released in the U.S. this morning too, where the economy added 303,000 jobs. That’s more than last month and more than economists were expecting. If you’re looking for good news in these numbers, depending on your perspective, it can maybe be found in the fact that they increase the likelihood of a rate cut in Canada. Trading on the swap market still implies a less than one in five chance of a rate cut next week when the Bank of Canada meets, but the odds of one at the next meeting in June rose after the numbers came out Friday, from a coin toss before to almost two-in-three after. The loonie also lost half a cent when the numbers came out — another sign the market thinks a cut is coming.

Exclusive interview with RBC CEO: We spoke with Dave McKay, the CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, in a wide-ranging interview that will air throughout the morning on BNN Bloomberg. The interview comes as Canada’s biggest company recently finalized its takeover of HSBC Canada, but the talk also touches on several other themes, from the bank’s outlook for the economy, views on the housing market and interest rate expectations, and even some advice for policymakers seeking to boost investment in key Canadian industries. You can watch the interview in several parts on The Open this morning, and online too, once it airs.

Laurentian retrenching: Laurentian Bank has struck a deal with Quebec-based money manager iA Financial to transfer $2 billion of wealth management assets in a bid to streamline its business after an up and down few years. Under the deal, Laurentian Bank’s retail investment-broker division will transfer about 16,000 client accounts to iA Private Wealth Inc., and about 30 financial advisers currently with Laurentian will be invited to join iA too. The move is the latest in a tumultuous few years for Laurentian, which parted ways with relatively new CEO Rania Llewellyn amid a widespread system failure last fall. That came after the company conducted a strategic review and considered selling itself but couldn’t find a buyer. Laurentian is Canada’s ninth biggest lender and has been trying to pivot its operations toward a new future.

More problems for Gabriel Resources: Things have gone from bad to worse for TSX-listed Gabriel Resources, a junior mining company whose shares cratered last month when it lost a $4.4-billion lawsuit against the government of Romania for halting a gold mine in the country more than a decade ago. The case was dismissed last month, prompting a 97 per cent sell-off in Gabriel’s shares, from just shy of $1 before, to a range of between one and three cents since. Worse still, the company was hit with having to pay $10 million in legal fees in expenses. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the country’s tax agency started seizing the company’s assets in the country. That came after the company announced it is still considering a legal appeal of the decision but said it only has about $2 million left in its accounts in the country, a figure it expects to be exhausted by the end of May.

New high for TSX: It was a blink-and-you-missed-it moment, but the S&P/TSX Composite Index did hit a new intraday high on Thursday, something we’ve been expecting for weeks. The previous high water mark of 22,213 was exactly two years ago today, but on Thursday the benchmark index at one point hit 22,239 — even if it closed below that. We’ll see what happens on Friday, but reaction to Canada’s job numbers and accompanying rate expectations are sure to be a major theme for the day.