Maybe we're thinking of different things, but I don't think C++ has owning references, modern or not? There's regular references (&) which are definitely not owning, and owning pointers (unique_ptr and friends), but neither of those quite match Rust's &.

Here's the document I believe your parent is referring to: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSt2VB1zQAJ6JDMa...

The claim in the article:

> Yes, C++ can be made safer; in fact, it can even be made memory safe.

The claim from this document:

> We attempted to represent ownership and borrowing through the C++ type system, however the language does not lend itself to this. Thus memory safety in C++ would need to be achieved through runtime checks.

It doesn't use "owning reference" anywhere.

However, I also got confused, and just subsituted "pointer" for "reference" in my head. References, apart from smart pointers, are indeed a problem for memory safety.