TORONTO — When University of Toronto engineering professor Parham Aarabi first began researching face tracking technology, it never occurred to him that his resulting startup would later be snapped up by the world’s biggest cosmetics company, L’Oreal.

In fact, Aarabi thought the initial application of what is now ModiFace’s lip and eye tracking capabilities would be speech recognition in noisy environments, he said.

“What happened was I realized, and we initially realized, that this technology had a lot of use for cosmetic simulations,” said Aarabi, ModiFace’s chief executive, in an interview. “For example, showcasing lipstick products, because we had the exact boundary of the lips.”

On Friday, 11 years after Aarabi founded the Toronto-based startup, L’Oreal announced it was acquiring ModiFace as part of its digital acceleration strategy.

​The Paris-based beauty behemoth, whose 34 brands include Maybelline and Lancome as well as its namesake beauty products line, did not disclose financial terms of the acquisition.

ModiFace’s technology is already being used by 100 brands and allows customers to try on beauty products such as lipstick or eyeshadow or do skin diagnoses via mobile app, online or in-store augmented reality mirrors. For example, customers can try on different hair colour shades by taking a photo or using their smartphone or webcam’s video capabilities before making a purchase online or at the counter.

ModiFace uses artificial intelligence to help track the user’s face and detect where the eyes and lips are, he said. AI is also used to track data, including colour selections and how that pertains to face and eye shape, said Aarabi.

‘New page’ of the beauty industry

The Toronto-based firm will be part of L’Oreal’s Digital Services Factory, a dedicated network to design and develop new digital services for the group’s brands, L’Oreal said.

“With its world-class team, technologies and sustained track record in terms of beauty tech innovations, ModiFace will support the reinvention of the beauty experience around innovative services to help our customers discover, try and chose products and brands,” said Lubomira Rochet, L’Oreal’s chief digital officer in a statement. “We at L’Oreal and ModiFace want to pioneer this new page of the beauty industry.”

ModiFace now employs nearly 70 engineers, researchers and scientists, who have submitted more than 200 scientific publications and registered over thirty patents.

In addition to beauty brands, ModiFace is also being used by the likes of Samsung, which has equipped its newest Galaxy S9 smartphones with its augmented reality technology. Aarabi said ModiFace also has a partnership with virtual bulletin board platform Pinterest, but would not disclose more details as it is not public yet.

Even after its 100 per cent acquisition, ModiFace will remain based in Toronto to stay close to the University of Toronto where Aarabi continues to be a professor and where the firm has established research partnerships.

Last April, ModiFace invested $4 million to fund student internships and research at the university’s engineering department.

“ModiFace became what it is because of the excellent engineering talent in Toronto… It’s a great place to have a tech company. We’re very much not only interested in staying here, but also growing here as well,” said Aarabi.

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Nearly one in 25 jobs in British Columbia is sitting unfilled, a striking sign of the growing labour shortage facing Canada as the economy heats up.

New data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) shows that the country doesn’t have enough workers for all the jobs available.

According to CFIB’s latest Help Wanted Survey, there were 399,000 vacant jobs in Canada in the fourth quarter of 2017, an increase of 38,000 vacancies, or 10.5 per cent, in just three months.

Leading the pack is British Columbia, where 3.9 per cent of all jobs sat vacant in the latest report, up from 3.6 per cent three months earlier. Quebec’s vacancy rate has also jumped to 3.4 per cent from 3.1 per cent.

The growing labour shortage comes at a time when Canada’s job market is putting in an historically strong performance.

The 5.8 per cent unemployment rate recorded in February ties for the lowest nationwide rate seen in Canada at least since 1976, a sign that the country’s economy has been firing on all cylinders lately.

Skills mismatch

Nonetheless, there are still more than 1.1 million people on the unemployment rolls in Canada. Some of that is structural — some percentage of people will always be between jobs — but some of it points to a continuing mismatch between Canada’s available labour force and the jobs being created in the country today.

Ted Mallett, vice president and chief economist at CFIB, says more retraining of workers in industries that are “in transition” would help mitigate the problem, by shifting workers from declining industries to growing ones.

The current labour shortage is a “particularly troublesome” problem for small businesses, he said.

“When a business of five people is missing one person, that’s 20 per cent of its workforce,” Mallett told HuffPost Canada on Tuesday. “That puts a significant crimp in their ability to offer products and services.”

Watch: The most in-demand jobs in Canada in 2018

But what’s problematic for businesses could be good for employees in this case, as the shortage of workers is likely to mean higher wages ahead.

Mallett says those businesses that are experiencing labour shortages are planning to raise employee pay by a larger margin than others. Currently, businesses with shortages are planning average wage hikes of 2.8 per cent in the coming year, versus 2.3 per cent for businesses not seeing labour shortages.

Highest vacancies in personal services, construction

The CFIB report broke down job vacancies by broad occupational categories, and found that personal service workers and construction workers are in highest demand, with vacancy rates of 4.5 per cent and 3.7 per cent, respectively.

Canadians unwilling to move for work

Mallett says greater labour mobility would help address the labour shortage issue.

“If there are some regions doing better than others, it would be beneficial if we were able to pull resources from those areas that aren’t doing as well,” he said.

But it seems Canadians themselves aren’t as interested as they used to be in being a mobile labour force. Interprovincial migration has fallen by half since the 1970s, according to data from Statistics Canada.

Canadians are putting a greater priority on their families and social circles these days, making them less willing to move for work.

Mallett suggests policymakers could help to mitigate this problem by making it easier to move. For instance, aligning certification and standards across provinces would make it easier for licensed professionals to get accreditation in other provinces, he said.

NEW YORK — Dick’s Sporting Goods, a major U.S. retailer, will immediately halt sales of assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines at all of its stores and ban the sale of all guns to anyone under 21.

The announcement Wednesday comes as students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, return to class for the first time since a troubled teenager killed 17 students and educators with an AR-15 two weeks ago.

“When we saw what the kids were going through and the grief of the parents and the kids who were killed in Parkland, we felt we needed to do something,” Chairman and CEO Ed Stack said on “Good Morning America.”

​

​Dick’s, one of the most well-known gun retailers in the U.S., had cut off sales of assault-style weapons at Dick’s stores following the Sandy Hook school shooting. But sales had resumed at its chain of stores under the name, Field & Stream.

The decision to overhaul its own rules on gun sales puts the company out front in a falling out between corporate America and groups like the National Rifle Association.

A number of major U.S. corporations including MetLife, Hertz, Delta Airlines and First National Bank of Omaha, one of the nation’s largest privately held banks, cut ties with the NRA in the days following the Parkland shooting.

Stack on Wednesday called for significant changes to U.S. gun policy, and called on lawmakers to act now.

“We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens,” Stack wrote in a letter Wednesday. “But we have to help solve the problem that’s in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic that’s taking the lives of too many people, including the brightest hope for the future of America — our kids.”

Shooter had purchased a shotgun at a Dick’s store

Stack also revealed that Nikolas Cruz, who killed the students in Florida using AR-15 assault-style rifle, had purchased a shotgun at a Dick’s store within the past four months.

“It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting,” Stack wrote. “But it could have been. Clearly this indicates on so many levels that the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens.”

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. is based just outside of Pittsburgh in a state where the first day of deer hunting season is an unofficial holiday for many families.

On the other side of the state Wednesday, a religious group held a blessing ceremony for couples with AR-15 rifles.

The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, north of Philadelphia, believes that the AR-15 symbolizes the “rod of iron” in the biblical book of Revelation.

An elementary school down the street cancelled classes for the day.

Stack said on “Good Morning America” that Dick’s is prepared for any potential backlash, but it will never allow the sale of such guns in its stores again.

Stack called on elected officials to ban assault-style firearms, bump stocks and high capacity magazines and raise the minimum age to buy firearms to 21. He said universal background checks should be required, and there should be a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms. He also called for the closure of the private sale and gun show loophole that waives the necessity of background checks.

Gun-control advocacy groups said voters and corporations are taking the lead on U.S. gun policy, and lawmakers need to catch up.

“This is the moment when business leaders across the country get to decide if they want to stand on the right side of history. Mothers make the majority of spending decisions for their families, and we want to shop with businesses that care about the safety of our families — making this a smart business move, too,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Acton for Gun Sense in America. “Dick’s Sporting Goods should be applauded.”

The National Rifle Association has pushed back aggressively against calls for raising age limits for guns, or limits on sales of assault-style weapons.

Calls to the NRA were not immediately returned Wednesday.

Walmart Inc., also a big gun seller, stopped selling AR-15 rifles and other semi-automatic weapons in 2015, citing weak sales.

Bad news, Canadian big spenders: You’re not going to be able to throw around those thousand-dollar bills like you used to.

The 2018 federal budget, released Tuesday, includes an item that will see a number of Canadian banknotes lose their status as “legal tender,” meaning they will no longer be accepted as payment in stores.

All the bills that are about to lose their legal status are ones that have been discontinued, including the $1,000 and $500 bills, as well as a rare $25 bill produced in 1935, and the $1 and $2 bills that were replaced by the loonie and toonie decades ago, but still have legal status.

It’s part of an effort to reduce criminal activity tied to paper currencies.

“Large denominations facilitate illicit activities such as counterfeiting, money laundering and tax evasion,” the government said in its budget documents.

But people holding these banknotes need not worry — they will still be able to return the bills to a financial institution.

“These bank notes would not lose their face value,” the Bank of Canada explains on its website. “If you have one of them, you will still be able to take it to your financial institution or eventually send it to the Bank of Canada to redeem its value.”

The Bank of Canada estimated in 2012 that nearly a million $1,000 banknotes were still in circulation, despite the bill having been discontinued in 2000. Money-laundering experts said the money was most likely in the hands of criminal groups.

Until now, Canadian banknotes have never lost their legal status, the BoC says, meaning even very old bills can be used for payments. But many older bills are likely worth more to collectors than their face value.

Technically, the federal government doesn’t have the authority to cancel banknotes’ legal status, so the budget move will require a change in legislation, the BoC says.

The federal government already has this authority over coins produced by the Royal Canadian Mint, which is why the previous Conservative government was able to get rid of the penny without legislative changes.

A recent report from Desjardins indicated that Canada could soon get rid of the nickel as well.