A Saskatoon woman was found guilty in Saskatoon provincial court Thursday morning of refusing to fill in the long-form census in 2006.
“I’m stunned,” Sandra Finley said outside court immediately after the verdict. Finley said she will study the written decision as soon as she can and discuss with her lawyer whether to file an appeal.
Finley argued during her trial that she objected to the government’s hiring of Lockheed Martin Canada Ltd. to provide computer hardware and software and printing of forms for the census.
She also invoked the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, saying it protects citizens from being forced to turn over “a biographical core of personal information” to the state.
She said on Thursday that the issue is an important one. Finley doesn’t feel Canadians should be forced to reveal personal information to the federal government, such as their ethnicity, sexual preference, occupation or other information.
“I feel strongly about this,” Finley said. “That’s not acceptable in a democracy.”
Finley was particularly surprised by the guilty verdict, in light of the federal government’s recent changes to census requirements. Stephen Harper’s Conservative cabinet decided last year that the long form census would no longer be mandatory, although a shorter one would be mandatory.
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