Here are five things you need to know this morning:

Ex-PM Mulroney dead at 84: A giant of Canadian political history has left us, as former prime minister Brian Mulroney has died at the age of 84. From a business perspective, Mulroney’s biggest legacy is without question being one of the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement that dominated the political discourse in the 1988 election and in large part continues to guide Canada’s economy to this day. We’ll have extensive reaction from his peers, compatriots and former political adversaries including Sheila Copps, Frank McKenna, Perrin Beatty and Jean Charest throughout the day on BNN Bloomberg.

Glass ceiling broken in the oil patch: Calgary-based oilsands company MEG Energy says chief operating officer Darlene Gates will succeed Derek Evans as the company’s new chief executive officer in May, making her the only woman to helm a major oilsands producer. Evans, who has led MEG for more than five years, will step down as CEO and leave the board on May 1. Gates is set to become one of only a handful of female CEOs in the history of the country’s energy industry. Prior to joining MEG in 2021, she had previously worked at Exxon Mobil Corp. and its Imperial Oil Ltd. Canadian unit, holding positions in Canada, the U.S., Germany and Qatar.

More trouble in the U.S. banking sector: Shares in New York Community Bancorp lost as much as 30 per cent of their value at one point in premarket trading on Friday after the regional U.S. lender revealed it has found "material weaknesses" in its accounting protocols and disclosed other issues that would prevent it from filing its annual report on time. The company also announced a major executive shakeup including a new CEO. At issue is the value of the lender’s commercial real estate loan portfolio.

Competition Bureau probes Google’s ad biz: Canada’s Competition Bureau has obtained a court order as part of the watchdog’s probe into Google's advertising practices in Canada. The probe launched in 2020 and was originally examining the technology products used to display ads on websites and apps. But in a release Thursday, the bureau says it's expanded the scope of its investigation to examine how Google may be leveraging its market power in a way that harms competition, as well as using predatory pricing in certain display ad technology services. Given the state of relations between Canada’s government and Big Tech, it’s worth watching to see how this one unfolds.

Big bank earnings week recap: Canada’s big banks spent the week revealing their quarterly numbers to investors, and now that all the numbers are in, a recap on the overall trends is warranted. A major takeaway was the uptick in loan-loss provisions, which is the amount of money that the banks set aside to potentially write off loans they fear might go bad. That debt pile ballooned to $4 billion during the quarter, but outside of that, the news was mostly positive from the banks this week, and shares in the sector have responded accordingly. Check out our recap of what it all means.