Manitoba Muslims are welcoming news Ottawa plans to make it easier for them to buy a house in a way that is consistent with their faith.

In delivering the federal government’s budget in April, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced officials would be “exploring new measures to expand access to alternative financing products, like halal mortgages.”

She added the government has been consulting financial services providers and diverse communities, and that an update would come in the fall economic statement.

Sheikh Ismael Mukhtar of the Manitoba Islamic Association said the news is positive.

Beneath Manitobans’ feet lies a treasure trove, ripe and ready for exploration.

Delvinder Zamir converted to Islam and then began the journey to learn more about her new faith.

“I needed to learn the basics,” said the 34-year-old, who converted from Sikhism.

In 2021, Zamir took an introductory course about Islam through the Manitoba Islamic Association.

“It was about how Islam came to be, about the Prophet and about the basic obligations for Muslims such as prayer, fasting, charity and pilgrimage,” she said.

If you follow X (Twitter) as I do, scrolling through hundreds of posts a few times a day, you can’t help but conclude that the political divide in both the U.S. and Canada, between Democrats and Republicans and between Liberals and Conservatives, has become wider and more extreme than it has ever been.

A pipeline that supplies fuel to Winnipeg has been temporarily shut down, the Manitoba government announced Sunday night.

In a news release, the province said it is working with other suppliers to bring fuel into Manitoba after Imperial Oil temporarily shut down its pipeline between Gretna and Winnipeg.

“Industry partners are leveraging extensive supply networks and actively working to minimize customer and end-user impacts by maintaining Manitoba’s fuel supply through other means including rail and truck,” the release said.

There was no indication how the shutdown would impact fuel supply in Winnipeg or across the province.

Distractions. I recall, decades ago, two high school lads riveted by the random outcomes of a surreptitious, they thought, game of cards, rather than attuned to my teaching of the Canada Food Guide. Message received — think about how I teach the Canada Food Guide.

LOGGING in Duck Mountain Provincial Park is a thorny embarrassment new Premier Wab Kinew inherited from successive governments. But he must finish what the previous NDP governments started and permanently end commercial logging in Manitoba parks.

There’s only one proper pathway to solve this shameful chapter in our province and it involves reconciliation, decolonizing parks and acting on our global commitment to end the biodiversity crisis. Solving several issues at once is the leadership we need.

The current Louisiana-Pacific licence to log Duck Mountain Provincial Park expires on Dec. 31, 2023. The new government will absolutely renew it given it’s been mere weeks since the election. While this may not have been enough time to resolve this colossally contentious catastrophe, the clock is now ticking and we demand a solution.

The Progressive Conservatives caused this problem in the 1990s by using an overestimate of wood in the Duck Mountain region as justification to give Louisiana-Pacific reign over Duck Mountain Provincial Park. Manitoba’s Clean Environment Commission had just recommended that “commercial forestry activity in all provincial parks should be phased out,” but this was ignored. The NDP fixed most of the problems in 2009 when they banned logging in 12 of 13 parks, yet left Duck Mountain to the logging companies.