Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press

A jury deliberated for about an hour Friday before convicting two men on human smuggling charges in a case where a family from India froze to death in Manitoba while trying to walk across the Canada-U.S. border.

Steve Shand of Florida and Harshkumar Patel, an Indian national arrested in Chicago, were each found guilty on all four counts they faced related to bringing unauthorized people into the U.S., transporting them and profiting from it.

A prosecutor urged a jury Thursday to find two accused human smugglers guilty, saying the men cared more about money than people's safety and their actions led to the deaths of a family of four in a prairie blizzard.

"They knew they were risking people's lives," Michael McBride said in his closing arguments after three days of testimony in U.S. district court.

"To them, all of those people were nothing but dollar signs."

Yash Patel had only been away from his native India for a few weeks when he was dropped off on the bald Canadian prairie in the middle of a nighttime blizzard and given vague instructions to walk in a straight line into the United States, he testified Wednesday.

A U.S. border patrol intelligence agent recalled Tuesday feeling horrified when he realized a group of migrants from India, including a young child, were out in a freezing blizzard on a stretch of open prairie at the border between Manitoba and Minnesota.

"My heart sank ... because there's more people out there," Daniel Huguley testified at the trial of two accused human smugglers. 

Some adult migrants had already been picked up after trying to walk undetected across the border on Jan. 19, 2022. One of them had a backpack, and Huguley said he looked inside.

Two men are to stand trial on human smuggling charges this week, almost three years after a family from India was found frozen to death on the border between Manitoba and Minnesota.

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel and Steve Shand are accused of being part of a large operation that brought Indian nationals to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them across the United States border.

The men have pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to transport aliens causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy.

Manitoba is the second province to sign a deal with the federal Liberals to expand school food programs across the province. 

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced the agreement during a press conference at a kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school in Winnipeg on Friday. 

The province is to receive about $17.2 million over the next three years under the National School Food Program. 

Kinew called the program one of the "most consequential public policy interventions" seen in recent Canadian history. 

A Manitoba man convicted of murder 50 years ago has been acquitted.

Clarence Woodhouse was found guilty in 1974 of fatally beating and stabbing a restaurant worker in downtown Winnipeg.

He was granted parole in 1983 and filed last year for a ministerial review of his conviction.

His lawyers argued a confession Woodhouse supposedly made was in fluent English, although he primarily spoke Saulteaux.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew continues to enjoy a honeymoon with voters one year after his NDP government was elected, but there are challenges ahead in fulfilling promises to improve health care and balance the budget.

One of the things Kinew says he has learned since the Oct. 3 vote last year is that changes can't be made quickly.

The province has seen hundreds of new health-care workers hired as part of Kinew's election promise to "fix" health care. But more workers, equipment and space are needed.

Climbing up trees, wrangling with ropes and navigating twisted odd-angled limbs may not be everyone's idea of a great day. 

But it is to Jordyn Dyck, who has turned her job as an arborist into a passion leading to international tree-climbing competitions.

Tributes poured in Friday for Grand Chief Cathy Merrick of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, who died after collapsing outside the Winnipeg Law Courts building. 

Merrick, the first woman elected to the role, was talking to reporters about two court cases when she said she felt dizzy and fell to the ground. 

Fire and paramedic crews arrived, performed chest compressions and carried Merrick away on a stretcher to an ambulance, which sped off with its siren on.