AN AD BY A MONTREAL CLOTHING RETAILER HAS DRAWN INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM FOR `USING SUICIDE' TO MARKET PRODUCT

Retailer defends ad as promoting `hard beauty'

Just as Canadians learned that its federal government greenlit the doctor-assisted suicide of a veteran who had been seeking treatment for PTSD, international attention has focused on a threeminute commercial by a Canadian retail giant seeming to romanticize the country's regimen of medically assisted death.

“All is Beauty,” released last month by the Montreal-headquartered clothing retailer Simons, profiles the final weeks of 37-year-old B.C. woman Jennyfer Hatch, who was approved for a doctor-assisted death due to Ehlers-danlos syndrome. Hatch died just days before the video was released, but the condition is never once mentioned in the film.

“Last breaths are sacred … when I imagine my final days I see music, I see the ocean,” she says against images of her making sand art and gathering with friends on the Tofino shore. “The most beautiful exit,” reads a title in the video.

The film notably makes no reference whatsoever to clothing, home décor or any of the other products sold by Simons.

“It's obviously not a commercial campaign,” Simons CEO Peter Simons — the fifth-generation heir to the company — explained in a video interview accompanying “All Is Beauty.”

Rather, he said it was an effort by the company to use its “privilege” to promote “human connection” and “hard beauty.”

“I think we sincerely believe that companies have a responsibility to participate in communities and to help build the communities that we want to live in tomorrow, and leave to our children,” he said.

Since its release on Oct. 24, the film's English-language version has accumulated one million views on Youtube, and in recent days has attracted widespread criticism as a glitzy corporate endorsement of Canada's rapidly expanding MAID program.

“Canadian clothes retailer Simons is actually using suicide to market their products,” read a widely circulated Sunday Twitter post by conservative U.S. commentator Ian Miles Cheong.

In a Monday post, the right-wing National Review called it evidence of “Canada's Suicide Fetish.”

The ad even drew comparisons to a pro-suicide ad featured in the 2006 science fiction thriller Children of Men.

The film takes place in a dystopian future where humanity has lost the ability to reproduce, and governments are encouraging suicide as a form of population control. Quietus, a euthanasia drug, is shown running commercials similarly featuring an oceanfront theme and relaxing music against the tagline, “You decide when.”

The annual rate of Canadians seeking medically assisted death has been increasing by double digits ever since the practice was first legalized in 2016 following a Supreme Court ruling which found that prior prohibitions violated the Charter guarantee of “security of the person.”

While the Trudeau government was initially careful to legalize MAID only for those whose death was “reasonably foreseeable,” subsequent court rulings forced an expansion of the practice to apply to any Canadian claiming a “grievous and irremediable” health condition. Starting next year, this will even include Canadians whose only underlying condition is mental illness.

And the policy may still be liberalized further. Just last month, the Quebec College of Physicians suggested to a House of Commons committee that MAID should be extended to newborns with severe malformations.

In 2021, 10,064 Canadians died by MAID, a 32.4 per cent increase over the previous year's 7,603. And that, in turn, was a 34.3 per cent increase over the 5,661 Canadians who died by MAID in 2019.

MAID rates have been particularly high on Vancouver Island, where the All Is Beauty film was shot.

About 7.5 per cent of deaths on the island are now due to medically assisted death.

This is more than three times higher than the national average, and a massive surge from just three years prior. In 2018, MAID deaths constituted only 3.6 per cent of total Vancouver Island mortality.

At the same time, there has been a reliable stream of controversial cases in which Canadians have either sought — or been offered — MAID on issues for which non-lethal treatment was feasible.

This included at least five Canadian combat veterans who were offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs caseworker after seeking help for issues ranging from depression to PTSD.

As revealed during a House of Commons committee hearing last week, one of the five veterans took up the caseworker on the suggestion, and was reportedly among Canada's 10,064 MAID deaths.

LAST BREATHS ARE SACRED … WHEN I IMAGINE MY FINAL DAYS I SEE MUSIC, I SEE THE OCEAN.