National News

Police in India say a third man has been charged in the deaths of four members of a family who froze in southern Manitoba while trying to cross into the United States.

They say the man allegedly acted as a scout for potential immigrants to the U.S. and helped the family get documents for the U.S. leg of its planned journey.

Dashrath Chaudhary faces the same charges as two others arrested Saturday, who are accused of acting as immigration agents and supplying the family with paperwork.

Premier Danielle Smith has struck a committee to investigate how the Alberta government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has appointed former Reform Party leader Preston Manning to chair it.

Smith said Thursday that Manning and the panel are to take feedback virtually from experts and the public, then issue a final report and recommendations by Nov. 15.

Manning is to pick the other panel members subject to approval by Smith.

The budget is $2 million, and Manning is to be paid $253,000.

Quebec's Court of Appeal has ruled that a Montreal hospital can permanently remove a breathing tube from a child who has been in a coma since he fell into the family pool in June.

In the decision dated Tuesday, the province's high court affirmed a November Superior Court ruling that permitted the Sainte-Justine hospital to go ahead with the procedure despite the parents' objections. The boy's parents appealed the Superior Court ruling.

A newborn baby is among three people who died in a highway crash near Castlegar in southeast B.C. on Monday.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Kris Clark says in a news release that police were called to a collision involving a car and a pickup truck on Highway 3a along the Kootenay River just before 4 p.m.

Clark says a 26-year-old man, a 25-year-old woman and an eight-day-old infant were killed in the passenger vehicle, while a two-year-old child survived and is expected to recover from their injuries.

The only person in the pickup was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

Searches for unmarked graves at the site of a former northern Ontario residential school have uncovered 171 “plausible burials," the Wauzhushk Onigum Nation said Tuesday, with other sites still to be investigated. 

Most of them were unmarked, except for five with grave markers, the First Nation said in a news release. 

Federal and provincial ministers were expected to meet with the First Nation Tuesday for discussions, including about resources to continue the investigation. 

Two sisters who have spent nearly 30 years in prison for what they say are wrongful murder convictions hugged and smudged before walking into a courthouse for a bail hearing Tuesday.

Odelia and Nerissa Quewezance were convicted in 1994 of second-degree murder in the death of 70-year-old farmer Anthony Joseph Dolff, near Kamsack, Sask.

After a decade of work tracing DNA back multiple generations, the remains of a Canadian soldier have been identified more than 100 years after he died in France. 

The remains of Cpl. Percy Howarth, a soldier in the First World War, were discovered during a munitions clearing process in Vendin-le-Vieil, France, in 2011, but it would take 10 years of experts digging through his family tree to find a living relative from his maternal line before he could be identified.

Police in India say two men are facing charges in the deaths of a family who froze a year ago while trying to cross from Manitoba into the United States.

Deputy Commissioner Chaitanya Mandlik of the Ahmedabad crime branch in the state of Gujarat says the two men were arrested Sunday and other suspects are also wanted in Canada and the U.S.

He says the two men are accused of acting as immigration agents, supplying the family with paperwork and assisting them in getting to the U.S.

Baldev Patel cannot remember much of the last conversation he had with his son and, while the memories are fast fading, the hurt remains.  

Patel's son, 39-year-old Jagdish Baldevbhai Patel, was found dead along with his wife and two children on Jan. 19, 2022, near a border crossing between Manitoba and the United States.

The RCMP has said the family was trying to get into the U.S. during severe winter weather and died from exposure. Investigators also believe the deaths were linked to a human smuggling operation.

A First Nation in southeastern Saskatchewan is preparing a proper burial after a fragment of a child's jawbone was found in an unmarked grave during a search of a local residential school site.

The Star Blanket Cree Nation made the discovery in the fall while the community was searching the site of the former Lebret Indian Industrial School. 

The bone was identified by the province's coroner's service to be that of a child between the ages of four and six from about 125 years ago. It was not located anywhere near an area that was known to be a graveyard.