Are T-Bills Halal? The 2026 Shariah Verdict on Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Zero-Coupon Strips

Quick Answer

No — T-bills are not halal. A treasury bill is a loan to the government sold at a discount: at the current 2.59% one-year yield, you pay roughly $9,748 for a $10,000 Government of Canada T-bill, and the $252 difference is riba — a guaranteed, predetermined return on a loan, categorically excluded under AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21. The same verdict covers treasury bonds, zero-coupon strips, GICs, and T-bill ETFs like CBIL. The compliant fixed-income alternative is sukuk — SPSK charges a 0.50% expense ratio and earns returns from asset ownership, not lending.

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If you are holding T-bills, GICs, or a HISA and want a Shariah-compliant plan for the cash-and-fixed-income side of your portfolio, book a free 15-minute call with our halal investing team. We map the compliant alternatives against your accounts, timeline, and tax bracket.

What a T-Bill Actually Is — and Where the Return Comes From

The question comes up precisely because T-bills look different from bonds. There is no coupon, no monthly interest deposit, no line on your statement that says "interest." You buy the bill below face value, hold it, and get paid the full face value at maturity. A reasonable person can look at that and wonder whether the prohibition on interest even applies.

Run the actual numbers and the question answers itself. At the Bank of Canada's posted yields (June 3, 2026), a $10,000 one-year Government of Canada T-bill at 2.59% costs you roughly $9,748 today. Twelve months later, Ottawa pays you $10,000. The $252 difference is your entire return — fixed at purchase, guaranteed by the borrower, owed to you regardless of what the government does with the money.

Government of Canada T-bill term	Yield (Bank of Canada, June 3, 2026)
1 month	2.25%
3 months	2.29%
6 months	2.36%
1 year	2.59%

Strip away the packaging and a T-bill is a loan. You are the lender, the Government of Canada is the borrower, and the discount is the price of the loan. The CRA, for what it is worth, sees it exactly this way: T-bill discounts are taxed as interest income, not capital gains. The tax system and the Shariah screen agree on the economics — only the verdict differs.

The Shariah Verdict: the Discount Is Riba by Definition

Riba al-nasi'ah — a guaranteed, predetermined increase owed on a loan — is the form of riba prohibited by explicit Quranic text, and it is the one ruling in Islamic finance with genuinely no scholarly daylight. All four Sunni schools, AAOIFI, and every major index screening methodology (S&P/DJIM, FTSE Islamic, MSCI Islamic) treat interest-bearing government securities as categorically impermissible. Musaffa and Zoya both flag them on sight.

This is worth contrasting with equity rulings, where the analysis has real moving parts. When we screened XEQT against the AAOIFI standard, the verdict required working through business-activity revenue and three financial ratios — interest-bearing debt and cash each capped at 30% of market cap, impermissible income capped at 5%. A T-bill never gets that far. There is no ratio to compute, because the instrument does not contain some interest — it is the interest. It fails at the threshold, stage one, no math required.

Instrument	Where the return comes from	AAOIFI verdict
Treasury bill (T-bill)	Discount on a loan to government	Fails — riba
Treasury / government bond	Fixed coupon interest on a loan	Fails — riba
Zero-coupon / strip bond	Deep discount on a loan, multi-year	Fails — riba
GIC / HISA	Deposit interest from a bank	Fails — riba
T-bill ETF (e.g., CBIL) / money-market fund	Pass-through of the above	Fails — riba
Sukuk (screened, e.g., via SPSK)	Income from ownership of underlying assets	Passes — subject to structure review

Treasury Bonds and Zero-Coupon Strips: Same Loan, Different Wrapper

If you arrived here asking about treasury bonds rather than bills, the analysis is shorter. A conventional bond pays a contractual coupon — explicit, scheduled interest on a loan. There is nothing to unpack. The ruling does not change with the borrower's identity: Government of Canada bonds, Ontario bonds, municipal debentures, and corporate bonds all share the lending-at-interest structure, and the safety of the borrower is irrelevant to the prohibition. Bond ETFs — ZAG, XBB, VAB, and the bond sleeves inside asset-allocation funds — are baskets of the same instruments.

Zero-coupon bonds — sold in Canada mostly as strip bonds — are the T-bill mechanism stretched over years. A strip bought at $6,500 that matures at $10,000 in fifteen years has packed every dollar of its return into the discount, which is predetermined interest. The tax treatment underlines the point: in a non-registered account, the CRA forces you to accrue and report notional interest on a strip every single year, even though you receive no cash until maturity. You pay tax annually on interest you have not yet been handed. An instrument whose entire output is legally defined as accrued interest is not a candidate for a halal portfolio.

Where T-Bill Exposure Hides: ETFs, Money-Market Funds, and "Cash" Products

Most Canadians who hold T-bills in 2026 never bought one directly. The exposure arrives through products marketed as cash management:

T-bill ETFs like CBIL hold a rolling ladder of Government of Canada T-bills and distribute the discount income monthly. The wrapper is an ETF; the contents are riba.
High-interest savings ETFs like CASH deposit fund assets with banks and pass through deposit interest.
Money-market funds hold T-bills, bankers' acceptances, and commercial paper — interest-bearing debt across the board.
Robo-advisor cash accounts sweep balances into interest-paying arrangements with partner banks. If you use Wealthsimple, the distinction matters: the platform's Shariah-screened portfolios and its cash products are entirely different animals — our full Wealthsimple halal review separates which parts of the platform pass and which do not.
Balanced and asset-allocation funds (VGRO, VBAL, XBAL and peers) carry 20-40% bond sleeves on top of their unscreened equity. The screening problems of conventional index funds compound here: non-compliant equities plus a dedicated block of interest-bearing debt.

One nuance cuts the other way: even purpose-built halal equity ETFs hold small operational cash buffers that earn trace interest. That incidental income is what purification is for — calculate the impermissible fraction and donate it. Purification handles a 1% cash drag inside a compliant fund. It does not convert a fund that is 100% T-bills into something holdable.

What Muslim Investors Use Instead of T-Bills

T-bills do a specific job in a portfolio: capital stability plus a modest return. The compliant toolkit covers the same job imperfectly, and the honest move is to show the trade-offs side by side rather than pretend there is a drop-in substitute.

Compliant option	What it is	Cost	Trade-off vs a T-bill
SPSK (SP Funds Dow Jones Global Sukuk ETF)	Index of board-certified global sukuk; launched December 2019	0.50% expense ratio	Trades in USD; carries duration and market risk
Manzil halal income products	Murabaha / halal mortgage-fund structures financing real assets	Varies by product	Not CDIC-insured deposits; less liquid than an ETF
Non-interest chequing account	Plain CDIC-insured cash, zero interest	$0	Earns nothing — loses to inflation every year
WSHR (Wealthsimple Shariah World Equity Index ETF)	Shariah-screened global equity	0.50% management fee	Full equity volatility — not a cash substitute

Sukuk: ownership, not lending

The structural difference is the entire ruling. A bondholder is a creditor — entitled to interest no matter what the borrower does with the money. A sukuk holder owns a fractional share of an underlying asset or venture — a building, an equipment lease, an infrastructure project — and is paid from that asset's income, typically rent in an ijara structure. Ownership return is permissible; guaranteed loan interest is not.

The caveat belongs in writing: not all sukuk are created equal. In 2008, AAOIFI's own scholars — led by Sheikh Taqi Usmani — criticized a large share of then-outstanding sukuk for replicating bond economics behind an asset-based facade, with repurchase guarantees that made the "ownership" cosmetic. The practical response is to hold sukuk through a screened index vehicle rather than picking individual issues. SPSK tracks the Dow Jones Sukuk index, restricted to issues certified by recognized Shariah supervisory boards, at a 0.50% expense ratio. Its posted 30-day SEC yield was 4.41% on the issuer's page (as of March 31, 2026) — for context, just over two points above the 2.29% on a 3-month Canadian T-bill, though in US dollars and without a government guarantee.

For Canadians who prefer a managed route, the two domestic platforms take different paths to the same job — Manzil leans on income products and halal mortgages, Wahed on globally diversified portfolios with sukuk allocations. Our Manzil vs Wahed comparison runs the fee and structure math head to head.

The honest trade-off

There is no CAD-denominated, government-guaranteed, Shariah-compliant T-bill equivalent. Anyone selling you one is selling the label, not the substance. Sukuk funds add currency exposure and duration risk; Manzil-style income products give up deposit insurance and liquidity; halal cash earns zero — on a $50,000 emergency fund, roughly $1,000 a year of purchasing power surrendered to 2% inflation. The framework we use with clients: emergency cash (3-6 months of expenses) sits in a non-interest account and the zero return is accepted as the cost of compliance and liquidity; money with a 2-plus-year horizon moves into sukuk or screened halal equity ETFs, where the expected return actually compensates for the risk taken.

The Account Question: Where Compliant Income Should Live

Switching out of T-bills also fixes a tax problem most holders never notice. T-bill discounts are interest income — fully taxable at your marginal rate, with none of the breaks dividends or capital gains get. At Ontario's top combined rate of 53.53%, a $100,000 T-bill position at the 3-month yield of 2.29% throws off about $2,290 a year and keeps you roughly $1,064 after tax in a non-registered account. More than half the return goes to the CRA.

The compliant replacements belong in registered accounts. A TFSA shelters everything — $7,000 of new room in 2026, $109,000 cumulative for anyone eligible since 2009 — and our halal TFSA guide covers which compliant funds fit the account best. The RRSP (2026 dollar limit $33,810) defers tax on sukuk distributions and equity growth alike, and exiting any non-compliant holding inside either account triggers no tax — sell the T-bill ETF, buy the replacement, done. Only the non-registered account requires any planning, and for short-term instruments like T-bills the embedded gains are usually negligible.

The Honest Bottom Line

T-bills are the safest conventional investment in Canada and one of the clearest Shariah failures. The two facts are connected: the safety comes from a government-guaranteed, predetermined return on a loan, and that guarantee is precisely what makes the return riba. There is no ratio to calculate, no gray zone, no minority opinion to lean on. Treasury bills, treasury bonds, zero-coupon strips, GICs, HISAs, and the ETFs built on them all fail the same way.

The replacement plan is concrete: emergency cash in a non-interest account, 2-plus-year money in screened sukuk (SPSK at 0.50%) or halal equity, registered accounts first for everything that produces income. You give up a government guarantee and a CDIC sticker; you keep alignment with the single most unambiguous rule in Islamic finance. For the full map of compliant funds available to Canadians, start with our halal ETF guide for Canada.

Want a compliant cash-and-income plan?

If your fixed-income side is currently T-bills, GICs, or a HISA and you want a Shariah-compliant restructuring — the sukuk allocation, the emergency-fund placement, and the registered-account sequencing — book a free 15-minute call with our halal investing team. We do this work across the GTA every week.

Disclaimer: This article applies the AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21 screening methodology to publicly reported data. Shariah-compliance rulings involve scholarly interpretation — for a binding ruling on your specific situation, consult a qualified Islamic finance scholar. Fund holdings, yields, and financial ratios change; verify current data via Musaffa or Zoya before acting. This is not a fatwa.

Related 2026 guides

Key Takeaways

1T-bills are not halal — the discount between purchase price and face value is interest (riba) on a loan to the government, prohibited regardless of issuer, term, or rate; the CRA itself taxes the discount as interest income
2The verdict covers the whole family: treasury and government bonds (explicit coupon interest), zero-coupon strip bonds (the same discount mechanism over years), GICs, and HISAs
3T-bill exposure hides inside popular products — T-bill ETFs (CBIL), high-interest savings ETFs (CASH), money-market funds, and robo-advisor cash accounts all fail the same screen
4The compliant replacement for the fixed-income role is sukuk: SPSK (SP Funds Dow Jones Global Sukuk ETF) charges 0.50% and pays returns from ownership of screened assets — its posted 30-day SEC yield was 4.41% (as of March 31, 2026), versus 2.29% on a 3-month Canadian T-bill
5There is no perfect CAD halal T-bill equivalent — sukuk adds currency and duration risk, and halal cash earns zero; keep emergency funds in non-interest accounts and move 2-plus-year money into sukuk or halal equity

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:Why is the T-bill discount considered riba if no interest is ever paid?

A:Because the discount is the interest — it is just collected up front instead of in coupon payments. When you buy a one-year Government of Canada T-bill at the current 2.59% yield, you pay roughly $9,748 today and the government repays $10,000 at maturity. Strip away the packaging and the transaction is a loan: you hand the government $9,748, and it contractually owes you back a larger, predetermined amount. That guaranteed increase on a loan is the textbook definition of riba al-nasi'ah — the form of riba prohibited by explicit Quranic text and by consensus across all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence. The CRA agrees with the economics, incidentally: it taxes the T-bill discount as interest income, not as a capital gain. The absence of a coupon changes the cash-flow schedule, not the substance. Every mainstream Shariah screening methodology — AAOIFI, S&P/DJIM, FTSE Islamic, MSCI Islamic — classifies T-bills as interest-bearing securities and excludes them categorically.

Q:Are Government of Canada bonds and provincial bonds halal?

A:No. A conventional government bond is even more straightforwardly non-compliant than a T-bill, because the interest is explicit: the bond pays a fixed coupon — a contractually guaranteed periodic payment on a loan to the issuer. Whether the borrower is the federal government, Ontario, a municipality, or a blue-chip corporation makes no difference to the ruling; the prohibition attaches to the lending-at-interest structure, not to the identity or creditworthiness of the borrower. This also covers real-return bonds (the inflation adjustment does not change the loan-plus-guaranteed-increase structure) and bond ETFs like ZAG, XBB, or VAB, which are simply baskets of these instruments. The compliant analogue for the income-and-stability role bonds play in a portfolio is sukuk — certificates that pay returns from ownership of underlying assets rather than from lending.

Q:Are zero-coupon (strip) bonds halal?

A:No. A zero-coupon bond — sold in Canada mostly as a strip bond — uses exactly the same mechanism as a T-bill, stretched over a longer term: you buy at a deep discount to face value, receive no payments along the way, and collect the full face value at maturity. The entire return is the discount, and the discount is predetermined interest on a loan. If anything, the strip bond illustrates the riba structure more starkly than a coupon bond does, because there is no other source of return to point to. Canadian tax law treats it the same way: in a non-registered account, the CRA requires you to accrue and report the notional interest on a strip bond every year, even though you receive no cash until maturity. An instrument whose entire economic output is taxed as accrued interest is not going to pass a screen whose first rule is no interest.

Q:Are T-bill ETFs and money-market funds like CBIL or CASH halal?

A:No. Wrapping a non-compliant instrument in an ETF does not change the ruling. CBIL holds a ladder of Government of Canada T-bills — its entire return is the same discount-based interest, distributed monthly. CASH and its high-interest-savings-ETF peers deposit fund assets with Canadian banks and pass through the deposit interest. Conventional money-market funds hold T-bills, bankers' acceptances, and commercial paper — all interest-bearing debt. The same applies to the cash or savings products inside robo-advisor platforms, which typically sweep balances into interest-paying accounts. Under AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21, a fund is only as compliant as what it holds, and these funds hold nothing but riba-generating paper. A Muslim investor parking cash needs a structurally different vehicle — a non-interest account, a murabaha-based savings product, or a sukuk fund — not a cheaper or more convenient wrapper around the same loans.

Q:What makes sukuk halal when bonds are not?

A:The source of the return. A bond is a loan: the holder is a creditor entitled to interest regardless of what the borrower does with the money. A sukuk certificate represents fractional ownership of an underlying asset or venture — real estate, equipment leases, infrastructure — and the holder's return comes from that asset's income, such as rent under an ijara structure. Ownership returns are permissible; guaranteed returns on loans are not. That is the principle. The honest caveat: sukuk structures vary in quality, and in 2008 AAOIFI's own scholars, led by Sheikh Taqi Usmani, criticized a large share of then-outstanding sukuk for replicating bond economics behind an asset-based facade. The practical response is to hold sukuk through a screened vehicle rather than picking individual issues — SPSK, the SP Funds Dow Jones Global Sukuk ETF, tracks an index restricted to sukuk certified by recognized Shariah supervisory boards, charges a 0.50% expense ratio, and posted a 30-day SEC yield of 4.41% on the issuer's page (as of March 31, 2026).

Q:Is there a halal equivalent of a high-interest savings account in Canada?

A:Not a perfect one, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The compliant options each give up something a HISA offers. A non-interest chequing account is fully compliant and CDIC-insured but earns zero — at roughly 2% inflation, $50,000 parked there loses about $1,000 of purchasing power a year. Manzil offers halal income products built on murabaha and mortgage-fund structures, with returns generated from financing real assets rather than deposit interest — closer to the savings role, but not CDIC-insured deposit accounts. A sukuk ETF like SPSK pays a real income stream (0.50% expense ratio) but trades in US dollars and carries duration and market risk a savings account does not. The working framework we use with clients: keep true emergency cash in a non-interest account and accept the zero, then move money you will not need for two-plus years into sukuk or halal equity. What you should not do is hold the HISA and plan to donate the interest — deliberately contracting for riba is the prohibited act, not merely keeping the proceeds.

Q:I already earned interest from T-bills or a HISA before learning the ruling. What do I do with it?

A:The standard scholarly position is that interest already received is purified by giving it away — donated to charity with no expectation of reward, since it was never legitimately yours to keep. It cannot be netted against your taxes, spent on personal obligations, or used to pay zakat (zakat must come from pure wealth). Purification handles the past; it is not a license for the future. Once you know the instrument is non-compliant, the obligation is to exit: sell the T-bills or empty the HISA, redirect the principal into compliant vehicles, and donate any accrued interest. Inside an RRSP or TFSA the exit is clean — selling triggers no tax. Note the distinction that trips people up: purification is a remedy for incidental or past non-compliant income, not a maintenance plan that makes ongoing T-bill ownership acceptable.

Q:How does the CRA tax T-bill income, and does switching to halal alternatives change the tax picture?

A:T-bill discounts are taxed as interest income — fully includable at your marginal rate, with no dividend tax credit and no 50% capital-gains inclusion. At Ontario's top combined rate of 53.53%, a $100,000 T-bill position yielding 2.29% generates about $2,290 of annual interest and keeps you roughly $1,064 after tax in a non-registered account. Switching to compliant alternatives changes the character of the income: sukuk fund distributions held in a non-registered account are generally foreign income (also fully taxable, plus SPSK trades in US dollars, so currency conversion applies), while halal equity ETFs generate capital gains taxed at the 50% inclusion rate — structurally more tax-efficient than interest. The cleanest answer is registered accounts: inside a TFSA ($7,000 of new room in 2026, $109,000 cumulative since 2009) or an RRSP (2026 dollar limit $33,810), the income character does not matter because nothing is taxed year to year.

Question: Why is the T-bill discount considered riba if no interest is ever paid?

Answer: Because the discount is the interest — it is just collected up front instead of in coupon payments. When you buy a one-year Government of Canada T-bill at the current 2.59% yield, you pay roughly $9,748 today and the government repays $10,000 at maturity. Strip away the packaging and the transaction is a loan: you hand the government $9,748, and it contractually owes you back a larger, predetermined amount. That guaranteed increase on a loan is the textbook definition of riba al-nasi'ah — the form of riba prohibited by explicit Quranic text and by consensus across all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence. The CRA agrees with the economics, incidentally: it taxes the T-bill discount as interest income, not as a capital gain. The absence of a coupon changes the cash-flow schedule, not the substance. Every mainstream Shariah screening methodology — AAOIFI, S&P/DJIM, FTSE Islamic, MSCI Islamic — classifies T-bills as interest-bearing securities and excludes them categorically.

Question: Are Government of Canada bonds and provincial bonds halal?

Answer: No. A conventional government bond is even more straightforwardly non-compliant than a T-bill, because the interest is explicit: the bond pays a fixed coupon — a contractually guaranteed periodic payment on a loan to the issuer. Whether the borrower is the federal government, Ontario, a municipality, or a blue-chip corporation makes no difference to the ruling; the prohibition attaches to the lending-at-interest structure, not to the identity or creditworthiness of the borrower. This also covers real-return bonds (the inflation adjustment does not change the loan-plus-guaranteed-increase structure) and bond ETFs like ZAG, XBB, or VAB, which are simply baskets of these instruments. The compliant analogue for the income-and-stability role bonds play in a portfolio is sukuk — certificates that pay returns from ownership of underlying assets rather than from lending.

Question: Are zero-coupon (strip) bonds halal?

Answer: No. A zero-coupon bond — sold in Canada mostly as a strip bond — uses exactly the same mechanism as a T-bill, stretched over a longer term: you buy at a deep discount to face value, receive no payments along the way, and collect the full face value at maturity. The entire return is the discount, and the discount is predetermined interest on a loan. If anything, the strip bond illustrates the riba structure more starkly than a coupon bond does, because there is no other source of return to point to. Canadian tax law treats it the same way: in a non-registered account, the CRA requires you to accrue and report the notional interest on a strip bond every year, even though you receive no cash until maturity. An instrument whose entire economic output is taxed as accrued interest is not going to pass a screen whose first rule is no interest.

Question: Are T-bill ETFs and money-market funds like CBIL or CASH halal?

Answer: No. Wrapping a non-compliant instrument in an ETF does not change the ruling. CBIL holds a ladder of Government of Canada T-bills — its entire return is the same discount-based interest, distributed monthly. CASH and its high-interest-savings-ETF peers deposit fund assets with Canadian banks and pass through the deposit interest. Conventional money-market funds hold T-bills, bankers' acceptances, and commercial paper — all interest-bearing debt. The same applies to the cash or savings products inside robo-advisor platforms, which typically sweep balances into interest-paying accounts. Under AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21, a fund is only as compliant as what it holds, and these funds hold nothing but riba-generating paper. A Muslim investor parking cash needs a structurally different vehicle — a non-interest account, a murabaha-based savings product, or a sukuk fund — not a cheaper or more convenient wrapper around the same loans.

Question: What makes sukuk halal when bonds are not?

Answer: The source of the return. A bond is a loan: the holder is a creditor entitled to interest regardless of what the borrower does with the money. A sukuk certificate represents fractional ownership of an underlying asset or venture — real estate, equipment leases, infrastructure — and the holder's return comes from that asset's income, such as rent under an ijara structure. Ownership returns are permissible; guaranteed returns on loans are not. That is the principle. The honest caveat: sukuk structures vary in quality, and in 2008 AAOIFI's own scholars, led by Sheikh Taqi Usmani, criticized a large share of then-outstanding sukuk for replicating bond economics behind an asset-based facade. The practical response is to hold sukuk through a screened vehicle rather than picking individual issues — SPSK, the SP Funds Dow Jones Global Sukuk ETF, tracks an index restricted to sukuk certified by recognized Shariah supervisory boards, charges a 0.50% expense ratio, and posted a 30-day SEC yield of 4.41% on the issuer's page (as of March 31, 2026).

Question: Is there a halal equivalent of a high-interest savings account in Canada?

Answer: Not a perfect one, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The compliant options each give up something a HISA offers. A non-interest chequing account is fully compliant and CDIC-insured but earns zero — at roughly 2% inflation, $50,000 parked there loses about $1,000 of purchasing power a year. Manzil offers halal income products built on murabaha and mortgage-fund structures, with returns generated from financing real assets rather than deposit interest — closer to the savings role, but not CDIC-insured deposit accounts. A sukuk ETF like SPSK pays a real income stream (0.50% expense ratio) but trades in US dollars and carries duration and market risk a savings account does not. The working framework we use with clients: keep true emergency cash in a non-interest account and accept the zero, then move money you will not need for two-plus years into sukuk or halal equity. What you should not do is hold the HISA and plan to donate the interest — deliberately contracting for riba is the prohibited act, not merely keeping the proceeds.

Question: I already earned interest from T-bills or a HISA before learning the ruling. What do I do with it?

Answer: The standard scholarly position is that interest already received is purified by giving it away — donated to charity with no expectation of reward, since it was never legitimately yours to keep. It cannot be netted against your taxes, spent on personal obligations, or used to pay zakat (zakat must come from pure wealth). Purification handles the past; it is not a license for the future. Once you know the instrument is non-compliant, the obligation is to exit: sell the T-bills or empty the HISA, redirect the principal into compliant vehicles, and donate any accrued interest. Inside an RRSP or TFSA the exit is clean — selling triggers no tax. Note the distinction that trips people up: purification is a remedy for incidental or past non-compliant income, not a maintenance plan that makes ongoing T-bill ownership acceptable.

Question: How does the CRA tax T-bill income, and does switching to halal alternatives change the tax picture?

Answer: T-bill discounts are taxed as interest income — fully includable at your marginal rate, with no dividend tax credit and no 50% capital-gains inclusion. At Ontario's top combined rate of 53.53%, a $100,000 T-bill position yielding 2.29% generates about $2,290 of annual interest and keeps you roughly $1,064 after tax in a non-registered account. Switching to compliant alternatives changes the character of the income: sukuk fund distributions held in a non-registered account are generally foreign income (also fully taxable, plus SPSK trades in US dollars, so currency conversion applies), while halal equity ETFs generate capital gains taxed at the 50% inclusion rate — structurally more tax-efficient than interest. The cleanest answer is registered accounts: inside a TFSA ($7,000 of new room in 2026, $109,000 cumulative since 2009) or an RRSP (2026 dollar limit $33,810), the income character does not matter because nothing is taxed year to year.