Friday, November 18, 2022

Ghost Robotics responds to Boston Dynamics lawsuit

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Boston Dynamics’ Spot (left) and Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60.

Ghost Robotics has responded to the patent infringement lawsuit recently filed by Boston Dynamics.

Earlier this week, we learned that Boston Dynamics is suing competitor Ghost Robotics for allegedly infringing on seven patents related to the former’s Spot quadruped robot. Filed in Delaware Federal court on November 11, 2022, Boston Dynamics takes issue with both Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 and Sprint 40 quadrupeds.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 and has worked on a variety of legged robots, both two-legged and four-legged versions. Ghost Robotics was founded in 2015 and has focused exclusively on quadrupeds.

According to the complaint, “Boston Dynamics’ early success with the Spot robot did not go unnoticed by competitors in the robotics industry, including Ghost Robotics.”

Here’s what Boston Dynamics told The Robot Report earlier this week via email: “We do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. Innovation is the lifeblood of Boston Dynamics, and our roboticists have successfully filed approximately 500 patents and patent applications worldwide. We welcome competition in the emerging mobile robotics market, but we expect all companies to respect intellectual property rights, and we will take action when those rights are violated.”

Ghost Robotics just sent the following statement to The Robot Report:

“Founded in 2015, Ghost Robotics has quickly grown to become the number one supplier of legged robots to US and Allied Governments. The flagship Vision 60 robot offers best-in-class endurance, speed, weather protection, and field repairability. It is the only legged robot on the market that is capable of operating in all environmental conditions for sustained, real-world missions to improve efficiency and save lives.

“Evolving from close customer collaboration, coupled with exceptional innovation at Ghost Robotics, these capabilities have led to rapid adoption by US Air Force, Army, and Special Forces as well as Allied Governments including the UK, Australia, Israel, Germany, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea Blue House.

“Ghost Robotics was born out of the PhD research of CTO Avik De and CEO Gavin Kenneally, under the tutelage of the esteemed Prof. Dan Koditschek at The University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Koditschek is a pioneer in the field of legged robots and holds the patent (jointly with his former students, Martin Buehler and Uluc Saranli) for the first battery-powered, dynamic legged robot, RHex (US6481513B2, filed March 14, 2001).

“Ghost Robotics’ success has not gone unnoticed by Boston Dynamics. Rather than compete on a level playing field, the company chose to file an obstructive and baseless lawsuit on November 11th in an attempt to halt the newcomer’s progress. Boston Dynamics is drawing on their considerably larger resources to litigate instead of innovate.

“Ghost Robotics strongly believes that fair competition drives the market and looks forward to a thriving legged robot industry, for the benefit of humanity.”

These are three of the first quadruped robots to ever be available commercially. We will keep an eye on how this plays out in court. Other quadruped makers include ANYbotics (Switzerland) and Unitree Robotics (China).

Ghost Robotics fires back against ‘baseless’ Boston Dynamics lawsuit

Brian Heater@bheater /  

A legal dispute over robotic patents is devolving into a war of words, as Ghost Robotics fires back against Boston Dynamics. The Philadelphia firm calls the suit both “obstructive and baseless” in a statement sent to TechCrunch. It notes, in part,

Ghost Robotics’ success has not gone unnoticed by Boston Dynamics. Rather than compete on a level playing field, the company chose to file an obstructive and baseless lawsuit on November 11th in an attempt to halt the newcomer’s progress. Boston Dynamics is drawing on their considerably larger resources to litigate instead of innovate.

Ghost’s statement, in which it refers to itself as “the number one supplier of legged robots to US and Allied Governments,” follows press reports of a lengthy suit filed by Boston Dynamics in a Delaware court. It adds that the company has its roots in its own legged robotic research, writing, “Ghost Robotics was born out of the PhD research of CTO Avik De and CEO Gavin Kenneally, under the tutelage of the esteemed Prof. Dan Koditschek at The University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Koditschek is a pioneer in the field of legged robots and holds the patent (jointly with his former students, Martin Buehler and Uluc Saranli) for the first battery-powered, dynamic legged robot, RHex (US6481513B2, filed March 14, 2001).”

On Tuesday, Spot’s maker told TechCrunch that it doesn’t comment on pending lawsuits, but added,

Innovation is the lifeblood of Boston Dynamics, and our roboticists have successfully filed approximately 500 patents and patent applications worldwide. We welcome competition in the emerging mobile robotics market, but we expect all companies to respect intellectual property rights, and we will take action when those rights are violated.

In the suit, Boston Dynamics cites multiple letters, including cease and desists, calling on Ghost to suspend the manufacture of its own four-legged dog robots over several alleged patent violations.

It’s not the first time to two companies have butted heads. Ghost made national headlines after images surfaced of one of its dog robots sporting a SWORD Defense Systems Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR).

A drawing from Boston Dynamics’ suit. Image Credits: Boston Dynamics

The company’s then-CEO Jiren Parikh (who passed away in March of this year) told TechCrunch at the time,

We don’t make the payloads. Are we going to promote and advertise any of these weapon systems? Probably not. That’s a tough one to answer. Because we’re selling to the military, we don’t know what they do with them. We’re not going to dictate to our government customers how they use the robots.

We do draw the line on where they’re sold. We only sell to U.S. and allied governments. We don’t even sell our robots to enterprise customers in adversarial markets. We get lots of inquiries about our robots in Russia and China. We don’t ship there, even for our enterprise customers.

Last month Boston Dynamics joined a number of follow robotics firms in an open letter condemning the practice of weaponizing robotics. The letter notes, in part,

We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues. Weaponized applications of these newly-capable robots will also harm public trust in the technology in ways that damage the tremendous benefits they will bring to society.

Boston Dynamics is seeking unspecified damages in its suit.


MIT's Boston Dynamics Is Suing Ghost Robotics Over Robot Dog Plagiarism

The U.S. Air Force was reportedly testing Ghost Robotics' robot dogs in 2021.

By Kevin Hurler
Published Wednesday 

Boston Dynamics wants to ensure its place in the creepy robot dog market. The tech company has filed a complaint against Philadelphia-based Ghost Robotics claiming that the latter has infringed on Boston Dynamics’ patents.

The complaint, which was obtained and reported on by The Register, alleges that Ghost Robotics copied Boston Dynamics’ schtick of a semi-autonomous robot dog with their Vision 60 and Spirit 40—a robot that resembles Boston Dynamics’ Spot. Boston Dynamics points out in the 110-page complaint that the way Vision 60 and Spirit 40 collect sight information, process environmental data, and even climb stairs could be an infringement of several patents the MIT spinoff has gotten approved since its founding in 1992. Boston Dynamics is also demanding a jury trial.

“Boston Dynamics, with its early roots in the robotics industry, has been and continues to be a pioneer and leading innovator in developing quadrupedal and bipedal robots,” the complaint reads. “Boston Dynamics’ early success with the Spot robot did not go unnoticed by competitors in the robotics industry, including Ghost Robotics.”

The Register points out that Ghost Robotics—and their terrifying robot dogs—have visited Tyndall Air Force base in Florida in 2021 to “add an extra level of protection,” according to an Air Force press release. Ghost Robotics also visited Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada in 2020 to test out their dogs according to a Business Insider article, which also reports that the company received an Air Force contract in April of 2020.

Much the same way dogs are man’s best friend, Boston Dynamics and Ghost Robotics are law enforcement and armed forces’ best friends. As Gizmodo has covered extensively in the past, Boston Dynamics has cashed in on national security—having previously partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on their Atlas disaster response robot. Ghost Robotics has also been teaming up with the armed forces as their tech is slated to help patrol the U.S. southern border.

But when Boston Dynamics’ Spot originally went on sale, there was a can’t use it for evil clause. The company has been adamant about its robots not being used for weapons or to harm people, where as Ghost Robotics seems totally happy to go all-in on military. Still, the U.S. Military’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency was an early backer of Boston Dynamics, but the company has since pivoted its focus to more civilian spaces. With that in mind, Boston Dynamics could be feeling the heat from a competitor in a space they typically control, hence the complaint.
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T. rex could have been 70% bigger than fossils suggest, new study shows

The largest T. rex to ever live may have weighed up to 33,000 pounds.

Paleontologists estimate that the largest T. rex may have weighed 33,000 pounds. (Image credit: Puwadol Jaturawutthichai/Alamy Stock Photo)

There's no denying that Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the biggest and baddest dinosaurs to ever walk the planet. But exactly how big could this ferocious dinosaur get? In a new investigation, researchers attempted to answer that question.

Paleontologists from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, estimated that the largest T. rex may have tipped the scales at a whopping 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms), making it heavier than an average school bus, which weighs about 24,000 pounds (11,000 kg). The scientists presented their findings on Nov. 5 at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's (SVP) annual conference in Toronto.

Currently, the heftiest T. rex on record is a specimen nicknamed "Scotty," which weighed 19,555 pounds (8,870 kg) when it was alive — about as much as 6.5 Volkswagen Beetles.

According to the new research, the largest T. rex "would have been about 70% bigger" than Scotty, said study co-author Jordan Mallon(opens in new tab), a research scientist and head of palaeobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature. "That almost doubles the size of T. rex," Mallon told Live Science.

To reach this weighty conclusion, the scientists first examined the fossil record, which shows that approximately 2.5 billion T. rexes once lived on Earth. However, only a small fraction — just 32 adult fossils(opens in new tab) — have ever been discovered, giving the scientists a limited amount of information to pull from.

Related: ‘Bold theory’ that Tyrannosaurus rex is 3 species gets stomped to pieces

Mallon and co-author David Hone(opens in new tab), a senior lecturer and deputy director of Education at Queen Mary University of London, also looked at population numbers and average life spans to create a model of the largest possible T. rex. They also considered variations in body size based on sexual dimorphism — size differences between the sexes of animals within a species.

"We wound up building two models — one exhibiting zero dimorphisms and one with strong dimorphism," Mallon said. "If T. rex was dimorphic, we estimate that it would have weighed up to 53,000 pounds (24,000 kg), but we rejected that model because if it were true, we would have found even larger individuals by now."

Using this data, the scientists were able to model T. rex’s growth curve throughout its lifetime — and estimate how big an adult might have grown.

Mallon cautioned that until a T. rex is found that is comparable in size to the one in the model, the model’s conclusions are purely speculative.

"This is simply a thought experiment with some numbers behind it. It's something that's fun to think about," Mallon said.

Indeed, the investigation highlights how challenging it is for paleontologists to draw conclusions about dinosaur species from a very limited fossil record.

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"This reminds us that what we know about dinosaurs isn't much at all, since the sample sizes are so small," Thomas Carr(opens in new tab), a vertebrate paleontologist from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Live Science. "Right now, we are nowhere near the sample size needed, especially when compared to other species of animals."

Carr, who attended the SVP conference, added that it’s plausible T.rex may have been much bigger than any individual scientists have found so far

"It's truly a stupendous animal," Carr said. "To imagine a T. rex of that magnitude is extraordinary, and I think an animal of that size is within reach statistically."
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 New Brunswick

N.B. Power backtracks on handing heat pump contract to one company

$30-million program now open to all qualified installers

Mia Urquhart · CBC News · 
The Enhanced Energy Savings Program offers free mini-split heat pumps and upgraded insulation, along with free installation of both, to homeowners who use electric baseboard heating and have a combined gross household income under $70,000, according to a government news release. (Danny Arsenault/CBC)

N.B. Power has backtracked on a decision to give all the work from a $30-million energy efficiency program to one company, but competitors still aren't happy with the process. 

Daniel Goguen, the owner of Moncton-based Tradewinds Eco-Energy Solutions, said he and roughly 100 other heat pump installers will end up getting "crumbs" from the program, rather than an equitable "share of the pie."

The issue centres around a program announced by the provincial government in September. The news release said it was a "new" program that would "offer a free mini-split heat pump and upgraded insulation — along with free installation of both — to homeowners who use electric baseboard heating and have a combined gross household income under $70,000."

But it turns out it's actually just a tweaked 2019 program that was originally awarded to one New Brunswick company. 

In a series of emailed responses, N.B. Power spokesperson Marc Belliveau said the 2019 program was properly awarded to Greenfoot Energy Solutions after a request for proposals was issued. Greenfoot applied in all four sectors of the province and, based on the bids that were received, was awarded the contract in all four. 

The initial program only included an efficiency audit and the installation of insulation — and it was limited to low-income households, the threshold for which was established by the Department of Social Development.

                                                      

AREA

ONE BEDROOM

TWO BEDROOM

THREE BEDROOM

Urban

$28,000

$35,000

$37,500

Rural

$39,900

$46,600

$55,300

Without issuing a new request for proposals, the government announced the "new" Enhanced Energy Savings Program in September, increasing the threshold for household incomes up to $70,000 and adding free heat pumps and installation. 

So, Greenfoot automatically became the one-stop shop for assessments, equipment and installation under the revised program. 

Goguen believes the government should have treated the program as if it were new and started another bidding process — or simply made all qualified installers eligible for the work — rather than hand Greenfoot an extra $30 million of work.

Greenfoot owner and CEO Joe Godbout said the company won the contract fair and square in 2019. Then, when it expanded by $30 million and added free heat pumps, Godbout said the company contacted several other businesses in an effort to spread the work around.

He said Greenfoot reached agreements with about 10 subcontractors — even though his company had the capacity to deliver the entire expanded program, he said. 

Built into the contract

Belliveau said the 2019 contract "allows the provision to add products," a point Goguen concedes.

It might be legal, said Goguen, but "it's not right. That's for sure." 

He said September's announcement gave Greenfoot an unfair advantage.

Daniel Goguen, the owner of Tradewinds Eco-Energy Solutions, said he and many other heat pump installers aren't happy with a not-so-new program from N.B. Power. (Submitted by Daniel Goguen)

He said it also "created a market disruption," when those who qualified for the program cancelled work they had underway in order to take advantage of the free equipment and installation. 

Goguen said he and others took "major hits" to their business when customers cancelled orders and opted to sign up for the free program. 

Industry backlash

Owners were so upset, they banded together to discuss the issue with N.B. Power last month. The provincial Crown corporation met with the group and eventually opened up the program to all qualified installers.

In an email sent late on Wednesday, Belliveau said "N.B. Power issued a Request for Qualifications to allow interested contractors who meet the eligibility requirements to be added to the contractor network for the Enhanced Energy Savings Program immediately. This was issued on November 10, 2022."

He said when the funding became available, N.B. Power wanted "to get to market as quickly as possible" and that the contract with Greenfoot "allowed for that flexibility."

Belliveau said "the intention was always to go to RFP for the fiscal year starting April 1, 2023, which we are still committed to doing."

Despite the change, Goguen says the rest of the industry is only going to get Greenfoot's "crumbs."

As the program's sole provider of a home's initial energy audit, Greenfoot has a "first in the door" advantage with consumers, said Goguen.

Other companies can do the work, he said, but it's pretty easy for homeowners to continue with the company that is literally standing right in front of them in their home, telling them what work they need done. 

An employee with Greenfoot Energy Solutions installs a heat pump on Prince Edward Island in September. (Shane Hennessey/CBC )

Green Party Leader David Coon said that part of the program should have been changed, too. 

"The hangover of the energy assessment being still monopolized by a single company seems to be unnecessary and really is just a hangover of the old program and should have been removed. So that's the last little irritant."

Coon hopes that will be fixed when the current contract expires at the end of March. 

Belliveau confirmed that Greenfoot is the only company that can do pre- and post-assessments, but that will end on March 31, 2023.

"This will be broadened in the upcoming Request for Proposals that will take place April 1, 2023," wrote Belliveau.

'Massive disturbance' in industry

Louis-Philippe Gauthier, vice-president, Atlantic for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said September's announcement created "a massive disturbance in that industry" when people dropped out of already-started projects to take advantage of the free program. 

While those companies can now do the work under the program, Gauthier said it will take a lot of effort to reach out to their former customers and try to get the jobs back. 

Bald man in suit standing on a busy sidewalk with arms folded
Louis-Philippe Gauthier, vice-president, Atlantic for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said September’s announcement created 'a massive disturbance' in the industry when people dropped out of already-started projects to take advantage of the free program. (Canadian Federation of Independent Business)

"So right now, the thing that's important for consumers that are approved for this program to understand is they have a choice," said Gauthier, who was also involved in the talks with N.B. Power. 

"They can select the provider that they want when it comes to the heat pump that gets installed, so they can select their local provider."

The program will continue to grow, said Natural Resources and Energy Development Minister Mike Holland on Wednesday. Holland said the program is "going to be worth more than $30 million, absolutely." 

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 OPINION

The parent company of Tim Hortons' is offering its new executive chair a package of stock options and shares that could potentially be worth nearly US$400-million.SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

I ate at a Burger King in rural Montana earlier this fall. The wait to order was long. My burger was overcooked. My mother got the wrong order, and it was cold as well. It was, she says, the worst fast-food meal she’d ever had.

I don’t blame the workers; the restaurant was understaffed, and they are underpaid. Yet those front-line workers at Burger King, Tim Horton’s, and all the other chains in the Restaurant Brands International Inc. 

Yet once again, the company is going to give a gargantuan pay package to its executive class, leaving crumbs for the underpaid and overworked people who serve us. Not even the common shareholders of the company are benefiting from the largesse.

RBI said Wednesday it has lured Patrick Doyle, the former CEO of Domino’s Pizza Inc., as its new executive chairman in a bid to goose its flagging stock. Mr. Doyle is viewed as a magician for turning around Domino’s, starting with his admission that the pizza was terrible.

The price is high: RBI will give Mr. Doyle a package of stock options and shares that could be worth nearly US$400-million if the shares appreciate by roughly 15 per cent a year over the next five years. (That return figure is not purely speculative; RBI put that into Mr. Doyle’s compensation plan.)

It is perhaps the biggest pay package RBI has awarded, but it’s completely consistent with the company’s past practices. RBI, driven by its private-equity owners at 3G Capital, has been giving out huge amounts of stock to its executives for years, claiming they’re aligning them with shareholders.

Former CEO Daniel Schwartz has made $260-million in profits from his RBI stock options in just over 10 years. The company has paid current CEO Jose Cil nearly US$55-million in the past three years, the bulk of it in stock awards.

And yet the great gains in RBI’s stock are long past; among all the restaurant stocks in the S & P 500 and S & P/TSX Composite indexes, RBI has the second-worst performance since the 2014 acquisition of Tim Horton’s, and the worst performance over the past five years.

Will it matter for Mr. Doyle’s compensation if that continues? Not really. RBI has crafted a package that makes it possible for him to grab hundreds of millions of dollars even if RBI continues to lag its restaurant peers.

According to RBI’s disclosures Wednesday, Mr. Doyle will receive 500,000 restricted shares worth roughly US$30-million, matching a commitment he has made to buy RBI stock with his own money. He also gets two million stock options.

He also receives 750,000 performance-share units (PSUs), to be paid out at the end of a five-and-half-year period. For him to receive any kind of payout on the PSUs in 2028, RBI stock will need to rise about 6 per cent a year; to get all 750,000 shares, it needs to rise about 10 per cent a year. If the stock increases about 15 per cent a year, he’ll get 1.5 million shares.

The entire options-and-shares package would be worth around US$370-million in the bullish scenario. The problem, however, is none of these share awards are tied to relative performance, according to RBI’s disclosures. If RBI’s restaurant peers gain, on average, 12 per cent a year while RBI gains 10 per cent, Mr. Doyle still gets a payout of a couple hundred million dollars. As they say in a period of broad stock-market gains, a rising tide lifts all boats.

Well, not all, really.

Each year, RBI must disclose the ratio of its CEO compensation to the average worker’s pay. (The Securities and Exchange Commission considers RBI a U.S. company; Canada has not mandated pay-ratio disclosure.

In the past three years, the ratio of Mr. Cil’s compensation to the median worker’s has ranged from 274 times to 973 times.

That, however, understates the inequity. RBI is primarily a franchiser of its concepts, with the actual fast-food workers on other companies’ payrolls. To obtain a better comparison, we can look at a publicly traded Burger King franchisee in the United States that also reports its worker data.

The median of Carrols Restaurant Group Inc.’s 25,100 employees worked an average of 30.5 hours per week in 2021, making a total of $16,403. That’s up from $12,993 two years ago. Compare the RBI CEO’s pay with the Carrols numbers and Mr. Cil made somewhere between 850 and 1,600 times the typical U.S. Burger King worker over the past three years.

Mr. Doyle’s package will blow those ratios into the stratosphere when the company places a dollar estimate on it in next spring’s proxy circular.

RBI still believes it’s got the right plan in place. In an interview with my colleague Susan Krashinsky Robertson, Mr. Schwartz said Mr. Doyle’s compensation package “is ultimately linked to shareholder value creation. In order to achieve shareholder value creation, we’re going to have to continue to grow the size of the brands all around the world, and in order to do that, we’re going to have to work and to continue to grow the profitability of our franchisees and deliver a great guest experience.”

Spokesperson Duncan Fulton adds, via e-mail, that if Mr. Doyle receives 100 per cent of his PSUs, that would imply billions of dollars in shareholder value creation. “Unpinning that share price growth would be core restaurant growth in local economies, growing franchisee profitability of thousands of small and medium-sized business owners – and at a time when franchisees are paying all-time high wages for team members in a highly competitive labour environment – so this is all predicated on creating value all the way through the business.”

My recommendation, however, would be less CEO pay and more money for the folks who grill the burgers, pour the coffee and truly create the value for the brands at Restaurant Brands.

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 The Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., is collapsing into the ocean as it loses up to a metre of coastline each year.

The people who live there are in a race against time to preserve their way of life — and their community — before it is washed away.


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Emma Morrison is the first Indigenous woman to win Miss World Canada

'I wanted to open that door for other Indigenous peoples to walk through'

Jenna Benchetrit · CBC News · 
Emma Morrison is crowned Miss World Canada 2022 on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. A member of Chapleau Cree First Nation, Morrison is the first Indigenous woman to hold the title. (Peter Jung Photography)

A few years ago, Emma Morrison was just like any other 16-year-old from a small town. A member of Chapleau Cree First Nation in Ontario, she spent most of her time hunting, fishing and playing sports — until she joined the world of beauty pageantry.

Now 22, Morrison was crowned Miss World Canada on Sunday evening, making her the first Indigenous woman to hold the national title. She'll advance to the international Miss World competition next year in Vietnam. 

"It wasn't about being the first Indigenous woman to hold this title," Morrison told CBC News. "Of course that's a high honour … but I wanted to open that door for other Indigenous peoples to walk through."

Morrison's first pageant was in the Miss North Ontario competition, where she was just one of three Indigenous contestants among 39 overall. 

But the state of Indigenous representation in Canada's beauty pageant scene has since improved, she said, noting that this year's Miss North Ontario, Grace Webb, is a young woman from Dokis First Nation who was one of several Indigenous contestants in the 2022 event.

"I really do it for them, Indigenous youth, Indigenous little girls. Because I was once in their position," Morrison said. She competes to show her six younger foster siblings that they can reach their full potential.

"It doesn't have to be pageantry but it could be applying to university or stepping outside of your comfort zone, and it's just important to be that positive example that your dreams too are in reach."

Mentored by Mrs. Universe 2015, a 'big sister' 

Morrison might be the first Indigenous Miss World Canada, but she isn't the first to ascend to the top of the beauty pageant world. 

After winning Miss Teenage Canada in 2017, Morrison received a surprising social media friend request from Ashley Callingbull-Rabbit, who was the first Canadian and Indigenous woman to win Mrs. Universe in 2015.

Likening her to "a big sister," Morrison said that Callingbull-Rabbit has become a mentor and a guide as she advances through her pageant career.

Ashley Callingbull-Rabbit, Mrs. Universe 2015, says Emma Morrison, Miss World Canada 2022, is ‘breaking glass ceilings’ for Indigenous people in pageantry and inspiring future generations.

"She too comes from a reserve and she is an example of, through passion and drive, you can achieve anything. So it's been fantastic having her take me under her wing," Morrison said.

Callingbull-Rabbit, in addition to Morrison, coaches a handful of other Indigenous beauty pageant contestants across Canada and the United States. She says she wishes she had someone to show her the ropes when she first started out.

"You can push someone in the right direction and give them all the tools, but it's really up to them to make that dream come true, and [Emma] has," Callingbull-Rabbit told CBC News. 

"Being a representative — it's not just being a face, and going around and waving and saying look who I am," she added. "For me it's about, what are you going to [do] with this platform, how are you going to use your voice and what kind of positive change are you going to create?"

Ashley Callingbull-Rabbit, a model, actress and host, was the first Indigenous woman to be crowned Mrs. Universe in 2015. She mentors Morrison along with other Indigenous women in the North American beauty pageant world. (Submitted by Ashley Callingbull-Rabbit)

Morrison, for her part, was tasked with developing a humanitarian project for the Miss World Canada's main competitive event, Beauty With a Purpose.

Her winning effort, called Reconnecting with Ribbon Skirts, began after the preliminary finding of 215 unmarked graves at the site of the Kamloops residential school in 2021, inspiring her to reconnect with her culture. 

"So far I have made 23 ribbon skirts for Indigenous women to feel beautifully empowered, and this is what I want to do," she said. "I want to give Indigenous women a physical link to our culture, to remind them to stand strong and be proud of their cultural identity."

She hopes to bring the initiative to the international stage when she competes at Miss World next year. As an Indigenous woman, she doesn't have any hesitancy about representing Canada on the world stage — but she recognizes the responsibility that comes with her title, she said.

"I come from such a strong community of people. I'm coming from Chapleau Cree First Nation in Treaty Nine Mushkegowuk territory. And everybody in my community, my territory has been so incredibly supportive," she said.

"It makes it easier knowing that I have this support, this backbone to help me move forward with this title."

Northern Ont. woman is first Indigenous

 winner of Miss World Canada

First Indigenous winner of Miss World Canada
09:16
Watch: Full interview with Miss World Canada 2022
02:59
Meet Emma Morrison, Miss World Canada 2022


Chelsea Papineau
CTVNorthernOntario.ca Lead Digital Content Specialist
Follow | Contact
Updated Nov. 15, 2022 

A woman from a First Nation in northern Ontario has made national pageant history as the first Indigenous winner of Miss World Canada 2022.

Emma Morisson is a 22-year-old proud Mushkegowuk woman from Chapleau Cree First Nation, 200 kilometres west of Timmins.

Over the weekend she competed in Toronto against 49 competitors from across the country and took home the crown.


RELATED STORIES Miss Teenage Canada competing globally

"I was recently taught, it's not about being the first, it's about opening that door for others to walk through," Morrison told CTV News in a Zoom interview.

"And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to show all Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous youth, and all Canadians that it doesn't matter how small the community or reserve you're coming from, you can still accomplish big things and make a large impact,"

Emma Morrison, Miss World Canada 2022, was crowned by the previous year's winner Jaime Yvonne VandenBerg. (Pageant Group Canada)

Not only did she win the title of Miss World Canada, she also won the Beauty with a Purpose 2022 title.

The Beauty with a Purpose portion requires all delegates to have a humanitarian project or be of service to their community. Download our app to get alerts to your device
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Morrison's project involved reconnecting with her Indigenous culture by making traditional ribbon skirts, which took her a year to prepare.

"After the 215 unmarked graves were found at the Kamloops residential school, this inspired me to reconnect with my culture. And this is when I began sewing ribbon skirts for myself to wear to remind me to be proud to be an Indigenous woman and all these feelings I knew I wanted to share with others," she said.

"So this is when I began creating ribbon skirts for other Indigenous women to wear so they'll have a physical link to their culture and remind them to feel empowered, to be proud to be an Indigenous woman."


This is not the first national beauty pageant Morrison has won.

Her interest in pageants began when she won the title of Miss Northern Ontario 2017.

"Growing up in Chapleau, I really was just hunting and fishing and playing sports and doing all the small town northern things, but what attracted me to pageants is it was something new," Morrison said.

"It sounded so exciting to step outside of my comfort zone and be surrounded by empowering women."

She then went on to nationals where she won Miss Teenage Canada the same year and was the first Indigenous woman to win the title.


Miss Teenage Canada, Emma Morrison of Chapleau

After taking four years off from the pageant world to pursue her education in hair and esthetics, Morrison hasn't skipped a beat.

Now, she will spend the next year preparing for the Miss World competition in Vietnam.

"This is the oldest, most prestigious competition, beauty pageant in the entire world where I'll be meeting over 90 delegates to compete for the title," she said.

Her advice for other young beauty pageant hopefuls?

"Always be brave and have courage to step outside of your comfort zone and through this, it will only expand and open more opportunities for you," Morrison said.

She said in 2012, she was a young girl watching someone from her town compete in a pageant she would go on to win years later and calls her recent title a "full circle moment."

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Canadian scientists discover new COVID-19 variant in deer that may spread to humans

The study presents what may be the first documented case of deer-to-human COVID-19 transmission, recorded in Ontario
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By Kevin JiangToronto Star
Tue., Nov. 15, 2022

Researchers have discovered a “highly divergent” variant of COVID-19 in Canadian white-tailed deer — and it’s already been detected in at least one person.

The study, published Nov. 10 in journal Nature Microbiology, might represent the first ever documented case of deer-to-human COVID-19 transmission, according to one of the study’s authors.

The variant, named B. 1.641, was detected in late 2021 from the nasal swabs of five white-tailed deer in southwestern Ontario. Around the same time, a “highly similar” genetic sequence to the variant was found in a human in Ontario, the paper read, suggesting that person caught it from a deer.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) confirmed the incident, stating the person “appears to be an isolated case with no further transmission.”

According to Brad Pickering, the first author of the paper and a research scientist at Canada’s National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, exactly how the person contracted the virus remains unclear.

“Obviously it’s rare because, you know, we’re only seeing one (case) out of all of these things we surveilled,” Pickering told the Star.

Pickering’s team of collaborators from across Canada have been monitoring 20 species including skunks, raccoons and bats since the summer of 2020, but this study was the first evidence they’ve seen of non-human spread in the wild.


“I don’t think we necessarily have to be overly concerned about (this exact variant),” Pickering said. “it’s not going to be this huge public health threat. But I think it’s informative to know that there’s a potential risk for viruses to be maintained in wildlife.”

According to Pickering’s paper, this deer variant descended from the B. 1 version of the virus — which circulated about a year ago — and has 76 mutations compared to the original COVID-19 strain. That’s more than the currently dominant Omicron BA. 5 variant, which has over 50.

Unlike Omicron, and despite nine of the deer variant’s mutations being on the spike protein — the feature of the COVID-19 virus targeted by major vaccines — B. 1.641 was effectively wiped out by blood samples of people either vaccinated two to three times or who have already recovered from infection, the study found.

“The interesting part is … we think because there is so many changes — there is about 76 changes to the virus — we’re thinking that it was probably circulating in deer for a long period of time, almost a year,” Pickering told the Star. “And a year for (the COVID-19 virus) is a long time.”

This potentially means older variants of the virus could keep evolving in animals like deer and minks, then eventually leap back into humans with new functions and abilities, Pickering said.

The human-to-animal spread of COVID has been well-documented — we know of at least 54 mammal species that are susceptible, the paper reads. However, viral spread from animals back into humans is much rarer. Minks were the first and, until now, potentially only example, according to PHAC.

According to Sarah Otto, head of the BC COVID-19 Modelling Group and a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of British Columbia unaffiliated with the study, just because a virus might leap from animals to humans, doesn’t mean it’s able to then spread from human to human.

“I am not particularly concerned about this lineage because there has not been documented spread from human to human,” Otto said.

Like Pickering, she primarily found the study “eye-opening” for documenting COVID-19’s spread within animal species in the wild. Most of our previous non-human cases were in domesticated animals, like minks, she said, which were kept in high densities where disease could spread.

“I think that this study was really eye-opening for demonstrating that not only is the virus spread among deer, but it’s evolving in its own direction within deer,” she continued.

There are two possibilities for how this strain might evolve over time, Otto said: “It could be evolving to specialize in deer and actually be very poorly replicating in humans.

“Alternatively, it can evolve different capacities and different ways of infecting cells that are still functional in humans, and jump back into humans, which is the worst (outcome).

“It’s too early to tell, but I think in general, having many large reservoirs of this virus in animals is bad news,” she said. “The more opportunities for this virus to evolve and jump back into humans, the worse it is.”

In a news release, Dr. Samira Mubareka, a corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor at U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, said “I was not expecting to find this highly divergent virus.”

Mubareka explained that because humans are often in close contact with deer populations, “including public interactions with wild deer and captive deer for farming, exhibition or hunting,” it may be easier for our diseases to spread within the species.

“For many communities, deer are important from both a food security and a cultural perspective,” Mubareka said.

“Usually when you find a new virus that has spread between species, you want to understand how hazardous it is,” she continued. “Our followup work is going to focus on what this virus does in human and animal cells, and how it transmits.”

The PHAC has updated its recommendations to hunters and trappers when handling game meat. Its website includes tips like cooking the meat to 74° C or 165° F internally; processing carcasses in a well-ventilated area with appropriate gloves and eye protection; wearing a mask when exposed to animal lung tissues and fluids; and more.

“Based on available information to date, animal-to-human transmission is likely very uncommon,” its website reads. “COVID-19 is mainly transmitted from human to human.”

In the future, Otto said she’d like to see more research on the impact of COVID-19 on wild animal populations.

“We’re taking a fairly limited snapshot of what’s going on because of the focus on this one species,” she said. “And so I think the question is, how many other species is this also happening to?”

Kevin Jiang is a Toronto-based digital producer for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @crudelykevin
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WORKERS CAPITAL
Canada's biggest pension fund will sell companies that don't take ESG seriously

CPPIB chief says it will divest if other efforts to commit to net zero fail

Bloomberg News
Sheryl Tian Tong Lee
Publishing date: Nov 16, 2022 
John Graham, chief executive of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. PHOTO BY BRYAN VAN DER BEEK/BLOOMBERG
Article content

The head of Canada’s US$400-billion pension fund said he’s willing to cut ties with companies that aren’t committed to their net-zero targets.

While the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board doesn’t believe divestment is the right path forward, it will do so if other efforts fail, chief executive John Graham said on a panel at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.

“We’re there as an investor and we share our expectations and use our governance rights,” he said Wednesday. If companies aren’t following through on their commitments, “then you have to use what governance tools you have to either seek change or we will sell at that point if we just don’t think it’s being taken seriously.”

Known as CPPIB, the Toronto-based pension fund is one of the world’s largest institutional investors in private equity, with billions invested directly and through funds. The firm has said it will consider voting against all directors at companies where there are oversight failures related to climate change, board gender diversity and deficient corporate governance.

Temasek Holdings Pte.’s chief executive Dilhan Pillay took a different view on how to deal with portfolio companies. “You can’t force change because it has to come from within,” he said on the same panel.

Singapore’s state-owned investment firm, which manages more than US$280 billion, has long argued that divesting from sectors such as fossil fuels could transfer the problem to new owners that aren’t as committed to tackling climate change.

“You have to make sure you pull everyone along with you to make it really sustainable in the long term,” Pillay said.

As traditional energy outperforms and security concerns grow, the debate around divestment is intensifying. It’s one of the biggest dilemmas for environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) proponents: whether investors trying to help reduce emissions should stop funding businesses that pollute the planet, or engage and guide them toward a just transition, while reaping windfall profits.

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Sarah Williamson, chief executive at FCLTGlobal, a nonprofit whose backers include McKinsey & Co. and BlackRock Inc., said selling off fossil-fuel investments doesn’t help with real-world decarbonization.

“The solution is not essentially to take the garbage out of your own house and throw it in your neighbour’s yard,” she told the panel.

Best opportunities

Graham said CPPIB is “really excited” about investing in ESG, and sees it providing some of the best opportunities in the next 10 years. At the same time, the firm has moved away from using the term internally because “it’s three kinds of distinct areas that require its own discussion” and grouping them together “just simplifies it too much,” he said.

CPPIB is focusing on liquidity in the current volatile market environment, to give more room to invest when opportunities present themselves, Graham said in a separate interview.

“Liquidity is probably more valuable today than it has been in a long time,” he said on Bloomberg Television. “Our portfolio is $529 billion. We can’t move that overnight, but what we can do is have enough dry powder.”

—With assistance from Layan Odeh, David Ramli, Abhishek Vishnoi and Francine Lacqua.
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