'That is chilling': New Zealand man says Canadian regulators, e-commerce platforms should have protected his late brother

The brother of a New Zealand man who died after ordering a product from an accused Canadian suicide salesman says it shouldn’t be so easy for vulnerable people to get dangerous substances online.

Sean Plunket says he’s shocked at how easily his brother, James, ordered the fatal package from Canada, and has tough questions for this country’s internet regulators and e-commerce platforms about why they didn't stop it.

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“The idea he could access this, not necessarily through the dark web, but it was there, hiding in plain bloody sight, that is chilling to me,” Plunket said in an interview from New Zealand.

“We know he was vulnerable at that moment. At that moment he needed protection, there was someone who took advantage of him and made it easier for him to take his own life rather than harder,” he said.

“Those bad decisions become very, very easy when you’ve got someone making money off it,” he said.

A New Zealand coroner found this week that Plunket’s brother James was one of four people who died after ordering products from Kenneth Law, a former engineer and chef who lived in Mississauga.

Those deaths push a CTV News tally of worldwide deaths associated with items sold online by Law to 129.

Plunket, a broadcaster in New Zealand, said his brother James was a DJ and personal trainer whose businesses and marriage suffered in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He was smart as a tack. Loved to party, loved to laugh,” Plunket said.

The report said Plunket ordered a package from Canada in June 2022, from a site “police have confirmed is connected with Kenneth Law.”

About two weeks later, the 40-year-old died in a hotel room, with packaging connected to Law’s business next to him, the report says.

Records show at least some of Law’s websites were hosted on the Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, which powers a variety of online marketplaces.

The company has said, after Law was arrested in 2023, they shut down his accounts. Police said at the time Law sent some 1,200 packages to 40 countries.

A Shopify spokesperson said, “Once we were notified about a potential violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, we immediately reviewed and took action to terminate all stores associated with Kenneth Law.”

Law is facing charges of first-degree murder and aiding and abetting suicide in 14 cases in Ontario. He has denied the charges. His lawyer has pointed out that he was selling a legal substance.

Law’s products were promoted on a suicide discussion forum that CTV News is not naming.

There’s no tool in Canadian law currently to ban websites. But that suicide forum could be caught up in the Online Harms Act, which is in second reading on Parliament Hill.

The law would prohibit certain websites from offering content that would encourage young people to die by suicide. The website’s operators have told CTV News they “don’t care about Canadian law.”

In a speech motivating the bill in June, Canadian Justice Minister Arif Virani said the Online Harms Act was necessary to protect Canadians against online bullying and hate.

“It terrifies me that the most popular toys in my house, the screens, are not subject to any safety standards right now,” he said.

Sarah Kennell of the Canadian Mental Health Association said she hopes Canada’s laws will follow in the footsteps of New Zealand, which moved to ban access to the forum and to Law’s websites.

Kennell also called for bigger responsibility from big tech companies.

“There’s a role for the federal government to be regulating that, especially when you consider the means of suicide, and what we can do to keep communities, family members and clients safe,” she said.

Sean Plunket said he believes Canadian companies should be doing due diligence and making sure the companies using their marketplace are not harming people.

“Don’t they have a responsibility as the provider in the marketplace to make sure they are not literally selling suicide?” he said.