Toronto stocks closed higher Friday, shrugging off contrasting jobs reports in the United States and Canada, and focusing more on hopes that a struggling
U.S. economy will begin to heal two high-profile resignations from U.S. President Bush’s economics team.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 35.23 points at 6,577.20, finishing the week with just a 0.1% gain.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill announced as markets opened that he’ll leave his post in a few weeks. And White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey quit, expanding the vacuum left by last month’s resignation of Harvey Pitt as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and William Webster as head of the accounting oversight board.

Statistics Canada reported that employment rose by 42,000 last month, largely in full-time jobs and the manufacturing sector, reducing the jobless rate by one-tenth of a percentage point to 7.5%.

But the U.S. unemployment rate shot up to 6% in November, matching the nine-year high touched last April.

The heavily weighted financial index pushed up nearly 1% and helped offset a 2% decline among information
technology stocks.

Shares of Royal Bank of Canada rose 53¢to $58.73, while Scotiabank pushed up 59¢ to $49.39.

Nortel Networks closed down 21¢ at$2.95, and Zarlink Semiconductor shed 27¢ to $4.65.

CGI Group launched a $265 million takeover bid for Cognicase share. Stock in Cognicase rose 54¢ to $3.94 and CGI fell $1.07 to $6.48.

Gold was the biggest gainer, up 2.5%. Placer Dome added 23¢ to $16.29 and Agnico-Eagle rose $1.15 to $20.25.

In other news, the chairman and CEO of steelmaker Dofasco, John Mayberry, announced his retirement. He is to be succeeded by president and chief operating officer Don Pether. Dofasco shares slipped 3¢ to $27.85.

TSX advancers beat out decliners 597 to 490, with 233 unchanged, in trading of 226.3 million shares valued at $2.2 billion.

The junior TSX Venture Exchange added 11 points to 976.76.

The weak American job report initially weighed on Wall Street. Although the Dow Jones industrial average reversed an early triple-digit loss, it closed up 22.49 points to 8,645.77, but down nearly 3% for the week.

The Nasdaq composite rose 11.6 points to 1,422.4, down nearly 4% for the week, and the S&P 500 index gained 5.65 to 912.2.

Although the Canadian dollar moved above US64¢ after the jobless data were released, it sank later in the day and closed at US63.87¢, down 0.17¢.