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“I would have done whatever was necessary because I wasn’t willing to fill it in,” she said. Asked whether she had been afraid of the prospect of spending a maximum of three months behind bars, she shrugged.

“I was curious,” she said. “I wondered what it would be like.”

She wasn’t, however, willing to pay the maximum $500 fine the Statistics Act charge carried because she said that would be an admission of guilt.

Her lawyer, Peter Rosenthal, said outside court that it was unexpected for the case to come down to the “exact nuance of what she was thinking as she failed to fill out the form.”

“It’s a very unusual ruling in my experience and opinion,” he said.

“He wasn’t criticizing her for being an older person with a lack of memory. I mean, everybody reframes things as you rethink something that happened a couple of years ago.

Tobias said she didn’t think her age had anything to do with it.

“People are people until they’re dead, old or young,” she said.

There were 3,700 Canadians who refused to fill out the census, Tobias’s one-day trial heard, and that list was whittled down through various criteria to about 53 people who Statistics Canada recommended taking to court.

But the Department of Justice didn’t have to go along with prosecuting an elderly peace activist who was a “model citizen,” Khawly said.

I mean, really, could the defence have scripted anything better for their cause? Did no one at Justice clue in that on a public relations perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster? Are they that myopic that they could not see the train wreck ahead?

“Could they not have found a more palatable profile to prosecute as a test case?” Khawly said.

“I mean, really, could the defence have scripted anything better for their cause? Did no one at Justice clue in that on a public relations perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster? Are they that myopic that they could not see the train wreck ahead?”

Tobias was a photogenic “martyr in the making,” Khawly said.

“Anyone in Justice who had not seen that coming should be ushered immediately into an introductory marketing course,” he said.