Commercial Forays Into Social Issues Highlighted by Simons Ad on Assisted Death

Customers walk into the Simons store at Londonderry Mall in Edmonton in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Jason Franson

The pro-life advocate who launched a boycott of a Quebec fashion retailer that ran an ad on its website highlighting medical assistance in dying says the ad demonstrates the willingness of corporations to weigh in on social issues, even to the point of being controversial.

“It’s become the new thing that if you’re a corporation and you want to be part of the ‘in’ crowd or the ‘in’ message, that yes, you promote these highly controversial ideas,” Alex Schadenberg, founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said in an interview.

“It’s seen as a social commentary and it’s seen as being progressive, and everyone wants to be progressive.”

La Maison Simons, commonly known as Simons, released online videos that included the voice of Jennyfer Hatch, a 37-year-old B.C. woman who received a medically assisted death on Oct. 23. The videos, released Oct. 24, included scenes of her with loved ones blowing bubbles on a sunny beach, playing music, and sharing cake in the forest. Both a 30-second and a three-minute version ended with the phrase “All is Beauty” with a Simons logo underneath.

“Even now, as I seek help to end my life, with all the pain, and in these final moments, there is still so much beauty. You just have to be brave enough to see it,” Hatch said in the ad. “And seeing the rhythms of what’s gonna keep going after I’m gone, bring a lot of comfort.”

Schadenberg said he found the video, which was removed from YouTube on Dec. 1, misleading.

“Euthanasia is not about beautiful. It’s not lovely to be killing people. This is really a sad concept that they'll be putting in that sort of light. In fact, it’s the exact opposite,” he said.

“This is really almost using this woman for their hope of social relevance. I assume they were gambling on the fact that there’s a strong support for euthanasia in Canada, and they were thinking people will come flocking to their stores. But in fact, there was this huge negative reaction.”

Peter Simons, chief merchant for Simons, posted a video on YouTube to explain the company’s motivations, though neither this video nor the videos of Hatch remain on that platform. As reported by CBC on Nov. 9, Simons said the project was “less commercially oriented and more focused on inspiration and values that we hold dear.”

“I learned early in my career not to underestimate our customers. They’re intelligent and they’re thoughtful and they want to engage in difficult conversations,” he said. “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.”

The Epoch Times contacted Simons to ask why the videos have been removed, and received a reply by email.

“The All is Beauty campaign has come to an end this week. Simons is now entering their annual holiday sprint. In this context, all of their teams’ efforts are focused on in-store and web holiday activities,” wrote Eric Aach from the public relations agency for Simons.

‘Huge Negative Reaction’

The lesson turned out to be a case study in marketing backlash. Schadenberg launched a boycott campaign on Oct. 25 that prompted some anti-assisted death protesters to hand out leaflets in front of Simons stores.

“I’m hoping that the boycott got to them enough that actually that’s why they came to their senses,” he said.

“There was this huge negative reaction to the ad, and it wasn’t just a bunch of pro-lifer types. In the U.S., all these media outlets all over had picked up on it and they couldn’t believe it. They thought it was insane that this was happening.”

Opponents to the ad sounded off on Twitter. Daily Wire podcaster Megan Basham tweeted, “Big Commerce and Big Government partnering to promote death.”

Hatch suffered from Ehlers Danlos syndrome, which affected her body’s connective tissue and is known to cause severe chronic pain. In June, she told CTV under the pseudonym “Kat” that she was “falling through the cracks” in receiving medical help. Despite publicity from the report, Fraser Health was still unable to provide her with palliative care.

Schadenberg says these circumstances were more telling than the ad.

“She was not nearing death, but she had a degenerative condition. With the proper care, she could live very well,” he said.

“Nonetheless, [the ad] was selling this as a beautiful death to die by lethal injection. It’s really the opposite of the reality, but that’s where the world’s gone. It’s gone into everything turning upside down. The opposite of the truth is being promoted as the truth.”

‘Proper Moral Questioning’ Absent

McGill University ethics professor Douglas Farrow says corporate and government agendas are increasingly converging in the areas of medical issues, assisted death, and the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards that corporations are increasingly adhering to.

“Issues like this are being included ... without any proper moral questioning, without any concern about the ethics of it. The combination of those, I think, certainly amounts to a high water mark and a very dangerous situation—that the flood tides of treating, in this case suicide, as a beautiful thing, will bring people who have not thought this through to suicide,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense to encourage customers to kill themselves ... [or] to run advertisements that make a lot of your customers unhappy, because they’re liable to shop someplace else. But I do think that some of these corporations are under pressure from those who are trying to bracket out and isolate companies that don’t go along with their political goals.”

Tom Flanagan, a retired political science professor from the University of Calgary, said the ESG concept emphasized in today’s corporate world has older precedents.

“ESG is not a new idea. It’s basically the same as the much older idea of corporate social responsibility, which has been kicking around for decades. Milton Friedman wrote against it in ‘Capitalism and Freedom’ back in the ‘60s. He argued that corporations really should not be giving away any of their shareholders’ money at all,” Flanagan told The Epoch Times.

“What’s different this time is that ESG has become attached to the much wider woke ideology. ESG in itself is not necessarily part of wokeism, but as things have unravelled, it has become a part of it.”