Hero of 2011 Stanley Cup riot faces jail for refusing to fill out census form

Bert Easterbrook is a hero in Vancouver, honoured for standing up to rampaging Stanley Cup rioters in June 2011.

But he's a villain as far as Ottawa is concerned because he also refused to correctly fill out his 2011 census form.

CBC News reports Easterbrook has been charged under the Statistics Act for failing to fill out the census just weeks after fending off downtown rioters who tried to burn a pickup truck the night the Canucks lost Game 7 to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final.

Easterbrook, grandson of a policeman, was one of several people honoured by Vancouver Police for his actions during the riot, which resulted in hundreds of charges that are still working their way through the courts.

But there's another side to Easterbrook that put him in the feds' bad graces.

Easterbrook has close ties to the movement to legalize marijuana. He's a photographer for Cannabis Culture magazine and friends with its editor, Jodie Emery, wife of jailed pot activist Marc Emery. Easterbrook, who looks like he's not to be trifled with, sometimes works security at pro-pot demonstrations.

[ Related: Why Canada still needs census in age of data mining ]

Easterbrook said on his Facebook page that he balked at filling out the census form because he's concerned his private information would end up in U.S. national-security databases.

"Well, it looks like the CBC will be doing a segment about my charges for improperly/refusing to fill out my Census properly due to the fact that personal info would be gathered for American intelligence agencies through the NAU (North American Union) and Patriot Act," Easterbrook wrote. "The circus winds up yet again ..."

According to Wikipedia, the NAU is a theoretical economic and political union of Canada, Mexico and the United States similar to the European Union. Critics point to measures such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the more recent Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America as steps towards creating an North American Union.

"It won't go anywhere," Easterbrook said on Facebook about the charges. "They didn't use my legal name so this will just be used to wake people up about the NAU and the Patriot Act when it comes to an American Military Complex company (Lockheed-Martin) processing the data and adding it to American Intelligence databases.

"People in Canada need to wake up to what the NAU and 'Deep Integration' actually means for us."

But if "it" does go somewhere, Easterbrook could be fined up to $500 and face up to three months in jail if convicted, CBC News said.

Section 31 of the Statistics Act makes it an offence to refuse to answer questions or not furnish the complete census information.

Lawyer Michael Vonn of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association told CBC News the charge is rarely laid, especially since most Canadians believe the census is no longer mandatory — which is not true.

"That might be what takes us so off guard around these sort of retrograde charges,” she said.

The federal government, in fact, scrapped the mandatory long-form census in 2010 that a percentage of Canadians are required to complete in favour of a voluntary questionnaire that critics say creates a much less reliable picture of Canada's makeup.

The decision prompted the resignation of Statistics Canada chief Munir Sheikh.

[ Related: Canada's suspect survey leads to calls for return of long-form census ]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at the time he thought the threat of jail or fines for failing to fill out the detailed census form were inappropriate.

"I know some people think the appropriate way to deal with that is through prosecuting those individuals with fines and jail terms," Harper said, according to CBC News. "This government will not do that."

Opposition critics rejected Harper's rationale as bogus, saying no one had ever been jailed for refusing to fill out the form.

The Statistics Act's punitive provisions are one of the more obscure laws that could land you in trouble in Canada.

According to Readers Digest Canada, it is, for instance, against the law to sell edible underwear in Toronto.

A prohibition-era aimed at bootleggers still makes it illegal to ship booze across provincial boundaries without going through provincial liquor boards, which critics see as a large impediment to interprovincial sale of Canadian wine.

A bylaw in Souris, P.E.I., apparently bans residents from making snowmen that are taller than 30 inches. Comics depicting crime are supposedly illegal. So hide your Batman and Spiderman comics, guys.