Canada’s assisted dying catastrophe is a warning to Britain

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sam Ashford-Hayes

An article by Sam Ashworth-Hayes that was published by the Spectator (UK) on December 11, 2022 arguing that Canada's assisted dying catastrophe is a warning for the UK. This is an important article because assisted dying (euthanasia) is being heavily debated in the UK.

Ashworth-Hayes writes:

There is a reason people have warned against legalising euthanasia time and time again. The incentives for individuals and the state to behave in diabolical ways are simply too strong to be ignored. Once the essential moral safeguard that murder is wrong is abandoned, the creeping normalisation of death by doctor inevitably expands.

This is again visible in Canada, where 10,000 people were killed by their doctors in 2021 alone. The scope of the law has shifted now from people facing imminent death to those simply experiencing ‘intolerable’ symptoms in the view of the patient or doctor. And – buoyed by these successful outcomes – legislators are now expanding coverage to the mentally ill, who will be offered the option of ending it all. Move fast, break things, and ask questions later.

The extent of this normalisation is astonishing. One clothing brand ran an advertising campaign centred on a young woman who had chosen to die; that she chose this in response to the failure of the Canadian healthcare system to treat her was left off-screen. ‘If I’m not able to access health care, am I then able to access death care?’ she asked in June; the answer, apparently, was yes.

This case speaks to a fundamental problem with assisted dying. There are people in Canada who will have begged, time and time again, to be put into suitable housing, or to have other accommodations made for them. But these things are expensive, and involve significant effort on the part of the state bureaucracy. Assisted dying only requires two signatures and the depression of a syringe. And while it might be a terrible outcome for those whose lives could have been saved, euthanasia is a tremendous fiscal boost to the state. The mentally ill are costly, the disabled are costly, the sick are costly. They take up hospital space, they take up doctors’ time, they impose a burden on state services, they require state workers to work.

As Yuan Yi Zhu has noted in these pages, all this was never intended to happen. The door to Canada’s dystopia was opened in 2015 when the Supreme Court declared that fears of ‘a descent down a slippery slope into homicide’ were just that: fears founded on nothing more than speculation and scaremongering.

In other words, the slippery slope continues to be the best practical description of how social change actually works: once there is momentum behind a cause, once the essential principled safeguards that a course of action is utterly wrong are abandoned, once we agree in theory that the arguments which compel the first step apply equally to the second. Once, in short, we begin, it is very hard to find a stable place to stop. British policymakers considering following Canada’s lead should consider where it ends.

These same arguements are equally important for the many US States that will be debating the legalization of assisted suicide in 2022. Don't go there. Assisted suicide, once normalized, is expansive.

Links to more stories of the euthanasia experience in Canada:

• Food bank clients asking for euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• Man changed his mind about euthanasia after receiving a wheelchair lift (Link)
• Veterans affairs offers euthanasia to former paralympian (Link).
• Veterans affairs worker advocates euthanasia for PTSD (Link).
• Canadian man claims that he was pressured to request euthanasia (Link).
  
• Why did they kill my brother (Link).
  
• Manitoba woman died by euthanasia based on inadequate home care (Link).
• Quebec man seeks euthanasia based on changes to home care (Link). 
• Alberta man requests euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• Ontario man approved for euthanasia because he can't get medical treatment (Link).
• Shopping for doctor death in Canada (Link).
• Gwen is seeking euthanasia because she can't access medical treatment (Link).
• Euthanasia for disability and poverty (Link).
• Euthanasia for Long Covid and poverty (Link).
• Canada's MAiD law is the most permissive in the world. (Link).

Simons says 'Soylent Green' new reality.

By Charles Lewis

Soylent Green

In the early 1970s there was a movie called Soylent Green. It starred Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. It was the first film I saw that was a dystopian vision of the future. It took place in a New York City in which the population has exploded to the point of anarchy. In response, the state came up with a voluntary suicide program to lessen the crowding.

When citizens did their civic duty by opting for death, they were placed in a room in which beautiful music played and a film of stunning scenery was projected onto a giant screen. It was a kind of farewell card to the soon-to-be deceased. It was painless and peaceful. The film was euthanasia as an art form.

Now a half century later suicide has again become an art form. It came in a video called All Is Beauty. It was produced by Simons, a major department store based in Montreal. It concerns a young woman named Jennyfer Hatch who has decided to end her life via MAID. 

Link to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition boycott of Simons (Link).

Jennyfer Hatch

It opens with a picture of a sterile hospital room filled with machines. Jennyfer says in voiceover: “Dying in a hospital is not what’s natural, that’s not what’s soft. In these kinds of moments you need softness.”

Jennyfer then proceeds to go through a series of lights and emerges on a beach. There she reflects on beauty, music the ocean. She talks about comfort in knowing the things she cherishes will continue after her death. Then the beach becomes a party… a pre-death party.

On the same website there was a very peculiar interview with Peter Simons, the former CEO and now chief merchant, about the making of the film. Unfortunately, that interview is no longer available.

It’s still worth noting what Simons said about why this film in support of euthanasia, MAiD, was necessary. In the post-pandemic period, he said, there was a need to “reconnect with hope and optimism.” I’ve watched All Is Beauty several times and I’m not sure what he was talking about.

Simons said he hoped Jennyfer’s story would help people “reconnect.” And this I really don’t get: “Build the spaces we want to live in.”

He told the CBC: “This isn’t about MAID, it’s really a story. It’s a celebration of Jennyfer’s life, and I think she has a lot to teach us.”

Simons is right, but the lesson may not be what he thinks it is.

The film is cinematically beautiful even if it is a cornucopia of New Age tropes. I agree with Jennyfer that a hospital is not a comforting place to be at the end of life and there is a need for softness. I know this because I volunteer at a very good hospice and I see what compassion and comfort bring to the dying.

I don’t in anyway mock Jennyfer. That would be awful. No one can really know what’s in a person’s mind as they face the end. I’m not saying she was brainwashed but in a society in which euthanasia has become normal the most normal thing is to end one’s life at the point of a needle.

For all its beauty the film to my mind is ultimately a failure. It assumed there are two choices: a sterile hospital bed hooked up to machines or euthanasia. This is where I would have hoped Jennyfer or Simons would have said that the pity in all this is that there is inadequate quality palliative care in this country.

They likely didn’t because we live in a society in which euthanasia is normal. That’s the pity of it all. We have no more moral imagination. The best we can come up with is kill…except polite people don’t say kill. This is the result of what happens when good people shrug their shoulders and say, “What am I supposed to do?”

When I saw Soylent Green years ago it left me with an odd feeling. I knew it was make-believe but at the same time a part of me wondered whether this could happen. Then I forgot about it till I watched All Is Beauty. It’s happening.

Article: Woman in Simons euthanasia ad wanted to live (Link).

Charles Lewis is a former editor with the National Post.

This article was published by the Catholic Register on December 7, 2022.

Woman in Simons euthanasia Ad wanted to live.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Jennyfer Hatch

Tristan Hopper reported in the National Post on December 5 that Jennyfer Hatch, the woman who was featured in the Simons commercial that promoted euthanasia, didn't want to die but she was unable to access needed healthcare. Hopper reports:

The woman featured in a glamourous pro-euthanasia commercial for a Canadian clothing retailer only opted for assisted suicide after her years-long attempts to secure proper health care failed, friends have revealed.

Link to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition boycott of Simons (Link).

Hopper continues:

Last week, CTV confirmed that Hatch was the same woman who had spoken to them in June about her failed attempts to find proper treatment for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare and painful condition in which patients suffer from excessively fragile skin and connective tissues.

“I feel like I’m falling through the cracks so if I’m not able to access health care am I then able to access death care?’ And that’s what led me to look into MAID,” Hatch told CTV in June under a pseudonym.

Like more than a million British Columbians, Hatch was left without primary care after her family doctor moved away. And so, after her Ehlers-Danlos diagnosis 10 years ago, Hatch’s treatment had largely consisted of a chaotic and ineffective stream of specialist appointments, none of whom had any background in her condition.

“It is far easier to let go than keep fighting,” she told CTV.

Even when it seemed apparent that her condition was terminal, Hatch noted that the B.C. health-care system hadn’t even been able to provide her with appropriate palliative care.

Hatch had no problem getting approved for MAiD even though she couldn't get treated and Simons didn't bother mentioning these factors. Hopper writes:

However, B.C. was quick to approve Hatch’s application for MAID. “There were no other treatment recommendations or interventions that were suitable to the patient’s needs or to her financial constraints,” reads a CTV excerpt of the MAID approval issued to Hatch by Fraser Health, the health agency serving B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

None of these complicating factors were mentioned in the Simons ad, which instead highlighted what it called the “hard beauty” of assisted suicide.

Hopper explains that Hatch is one of many people who have died by euthanasia because they couldn't receive treatment for their condition:

Tama Recker, a friend of Hatch, told CTV last week that her friend was ultimately comfortable with the decision to seek MAID, but that she also wanted to highlight a health-care system that was “very broken.” “Part of what Jennyfer wanted to do is get people talking,” said Recker.

Hatch’s case fits into an ever-expanding constellation of Canadians who want to live, but applied for medically assisted death out of desperation after failed attempts to seek appropriate care.

Last year, B.C. woman Donna Duncan was able to swiftly receive approval for assisted suicide in an Abbotsford hospital after years of unsuccessful attempts to find treatment for chronic mental-health issues. The killing of Duncan so blindsided her family that they referred the case to the RCMP for investigation.

Hopper ends the article by commenting on the Canadian Veterans who have been offered MAiD rather than the support that they need:

Last month, a House of Commons committee heard about five separate incidents of Canadian Armed Forces veterans being offered MAID after seeking assistance with issues ranging from depression to PTSD.

Most recently, former paralympian Christine Gauthier went public with her story of being offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs caseworker after she complained about delays in installing an in-home chairlift.

“Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now,” the caseworker told Gauthier, according to an interview she gave with Global News.

It is sad how euthanasia is exploiting people with disabilities who are poor, homeless and not receiving the treatment that they need.

What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

The New York Times published an opinion column by Ross Douthat on December 3, 2022 titled: What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada.

Douthat begins by writing about the pro-euthanasia ad by Simons, a Canadian fashion designer and retailer. Douthat states:

In an interview quoted in Canada's National Post, the chief merchant of Simons stated that the film was "obviously not a commercial campaign." Instead it was a signifier of a public-spirited desire to "build the communities that we want to live in tomorrow, and leave to our children." 

For those communities and children, the video’s message is clear: They should believe in the holiness of euthanasia.

In recent years, Canada has established some of the world’s most permissive euthanasia laws, allowing adults to seek either physician-assisted suicide or direct euthanasia for many different forms of serious suffering, not just terminal disease. In 2021, over 10,000 people ended their lives this way, just over 3 percent of all deaths in Canada. A further expansion, allowing euthanasia for mental-health conditions, will go into effect in March 2023; permitting euthanasia for “mature” minors is also being considered.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has been urging it's supporters to boycott Simons. 

Douthat asks the states that the advance of euthanasia presents a different question: What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized? Douthat continues:

The rules of civilization necessarily include gray areas. It is not barbaric for the law to acknowledge hard choices in end-of-life care, about when to withdraw life support or how aggressively to manage agonizing pain.

It is barbaric, however, to establish a bureaucratic system that offers death as a reliable treatment for suffering and enlists the healing profession in delivering this “cure.” And while there may be worse evils ahead, this isn’t a slippery slope argument: When 10,000 people are availing themselves of your euthanasia system every year, you have already entered the dystopia.

Douthat then comments on the concept of euthanasia as a human right.

The idea that human rights encompass a right to self-destruction, the conceit that people in a state of terrible suffering and vulnerability are really “free” to make a choice that ends all choices, the idea that a healing profession should include death in its battery of treatments — these are inherently destructive ideas. Left unchecked, they will forge a cruel brave new world, a dehumanizing final chapter for the liberal story.

Douthat acknowledges that their are Liberals who oppose euthanasia but he suggests that a potent Conservatism is needed to prevent euthanasia from spreading. He writes:

Yes, there are liberals, Canadian and American, who can see what’s wrong with euthanasia. Yes, the most explicit cheerleading for quietus can still inspire backlash: Twitter reactions to the Simons video have been harsh, and it’s vanished from the company’s website.

But without a potent conservatism, the cultural balance tilts too much against these doubts.

Conservatism is not required to oppose euthanasia but we need to call it what it is. Calling euthanasia MAiD takes away the reality that euthanasia is an act of killing. You don't need to be religious or Conservative to oppose killing.

Canadian retailer exploits a young artist’s euthanasia to market its fashions

This article was published by Mercatornet on October 31, 2022

By Michael Cook

Editor of Mercatornet

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

Sometime after Canada’s Thanksgiving Day on October 10, a 37-year-old woman named Jennyfer was euthanised. A few days later, on October 24, one of Canada’s best-known fashion retailers, Quebec-based La Maison Simons, launched an advertising campaign based on her wish to die.

As part of its “All is Beauty” marketing strategy, the company released a stunning three-minute video on YouTube called “The Most Beautiful Exit” about Jennyfer as she prepares for “medical assistance in dying”, as it is called in Canada.

The film opens with an empty hospital room. “Dying in a hospital is not what’s natural, that’s not what’s soft. In these kinds of moments you need softness,” she says. And suddenly the hospital room is washed out to sea from a sandy beach.

“I spent my life filling my heart with beauty, with nature, with connection,” Jennyfer says. “I choose to fill my final moments with the same.”

It shows her on a chair at a beach at the centre of a circle of mute white-clad figures, mostly women. Giant spiral glyphs etched in the sand are erased by the waves.

In a forest, she eats cheesecake with laughing friends, lit by the flames of a bonfire. Giant luminescent puppets — jellyfish and a whale —float in the air. In the darkness around the celebration, silhouetted against the lurid flames are young dancers carrying lanterns on poles.

“Even now as I seek help to end my life, with all the pain in these final moments, there is still so much beauty,” she says. “You just have to be brave enough to see it.”

The video ends with the words “For Jennyfer: June 1985 to October 2022,” and then “All is beauty” with a small reference to La Maison Simons beneath.

The man behind the video is Peter Simons, who has just stepped down as CEO to become chief merchant of La Maison Simons, the oldest family-owned company in Canada. He explains his marketing strategy in a supplementary video. “We are a company that values community, connection, and compassion,” he explains. “The events of the past few years have shown us just how important and necessary these values are in our world today.”

“[We] have made the courageous choice to use the privilege of our voice and platform to create something meaningful, something that is less about commerce and more about connection,” he says.

As a Canadian marketing website notes, “The trend of marketers speaking out on important social issues has been taken to a new level,” with the “All is Beauty” campaign. It is bound to be controversial – especially when the 30-second abridged version hits television screens.

The video is very unsettling. La Maison Simons is treating euthanasia as performance art – a brilliant collage of photography, dance, puppetry, music, and sand art integrated into a beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia. Perhaps it’s appropriate that it was released shortly before Halloween, as some of the scenes are reminiscent of a witches’ coven.

Jennyfer does not identify her illness but at the very least she is lucid and able to interact with her friends. She doesn’t seem to be disabled by pain or terminally ill. You don’t have to be terminally ill in Canada to request euthanasia. But is it ethical for a company to use her death as the centrepiece for a major marketing campaign to sell its products? The glittering video can’t quite hide the ghoulish side of this stunt.

This video was not cheap; dozens of friends and actors were involved in filming it over two days just before Thanksgiving. The Canadian advertising company must have worked frantically to edit the film by October 27. Peter Simons’s personal interest and investment must have made it all but impossible for Jennyfer to change her mind about dying. Does he really think that it is ethical to ask her to die according to an advertiser’s timetable?

While Mr Simons and Jennyfer applaud euthanasia as a beautiful choice, stories are beginning to appear in the Canadian media about marginalised people who feel forced to access MAiD because they have only one choice — and it’s ugly. 

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

Thirty-one-year old Denise has Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and has applied for MAiD because she cannot find housing where she will not be exposed to cigarette smoke and air fresheners.

Forty-year-old Mitchell Tremblay suffers from severe depression, anxiety, alcoholism, personality disorders and continual thoughts of suicide. He is unemployed and poor. He can’t wait to become eligible for MAiD. “You know what your life is worth to you. And mine is worthless,” he told CTV News.

Fifty-four-year-old Amir Farsoud is applying for MAiD because he is homeless. “I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die,” he told CityNews. “I know, in my present health condition, I wouldn’t survive it anyway. It wouldn’t be at all dignified waiting, so if that becomes my two options, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.”

Euthanasia as performance art is the prerogative of the well-to-do, the well-connected and the privileged. Euthanasia as social injustice will be the lot of the down-and-outs, the abandoned, and the marginalised. If La Maison Simons really valued “community, connection, and compassion”, it would be subsidising housing and medical care for people like this. Instead it is exploiting the death of a young artist to burnish its brand as a champion of progressive values.

Article: Canadian fashion company advertises with euthanasia (Link).

Canadian fashion company advertises with euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition 

Simons, a Canadian designer and fashion company produced a three minute commercial promoting their products with euthanasia (MAiD). 

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

The video titled: All Is Beauty - starts with the statement, dying in a hospital is not what's natural, it is not soft, in these type of moments you need softness.

Many people agree that dying in a hospital is not natural or soft but killing is also not natural or soft.

The words then appear on the screen: The most beautiful exit. 

The video continues with warm scenes of nature, of friendship and commentary by the woman who will soon die by (MAiD) euthanasia. The woman says:

"It can take dying to figure out what living is all about."

What does this message say to someone who lives with suicidal ideation?

We all have a wish to be remembered and to live a full life, with friends, experiences, beauty and joy. Simons has created a concept commercial that sells their products as part of a "complete life" and dying by euthanasia (MAiD) as the fulfillment of a "complete life."

The reality is the opposite. 

Euthanasia is about killing. 

Killing is not beautiful. 

Euthanasia is not about living a complete life, 

Euthanasia is not about caring for someone, 

Euthanasia is about abandoning someone to death. 

Euthanasia is not about fulfillment but ending life without fulfillment. 

Euthanasia is not about friendships and closure but it is about ending life without closure.

The commercial finishes with a tribute to Jennyfer who died in Oct 2022.

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

Before buying products from Simons remember who you are giving your money to. Maybe its better to buy from their competitors?