OTTAWA - A civil servant in charge of the census says it's already too late to bring back the mandatory, long-form questionnaire for 2011.
Marc Hamel's assertions were deposited as evidence by the government in response to a legal challenge by a francophone group fighting to save the mandatory long census.
"It is my professional opinion that this is no longer logistically possible for a census equivalent to the 2006 census to be conducted in May 2011," Hamel, the 2011 census manager, wrote in documents filed last month in Federal Court.
The court documents, obtained by The Canadian Press, also say that Statistics Canada employees stopped preparation work on the 2011 long survey in May.
That was a month before the census changes were made public in the Canada Gazette.
Hamel wrote that Statistics Canada staff received their new marching orders in May.
"Since then, work efforts on all aspects of the census and NHS (national household survey) have been concentrated on implementing the government decision," he said.
The Conservative government has been under fire since it announced it's making the long-form survey voluntary — a move Statistics Canada says won't produce reliable data.
The country's chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, quit his post at Statistics Canada in July after advising the government a voluntary survey would not be as useful as the mandatory one.
The Tories say they're scrapping the mandatory long questionnaire because they claim it's too coercive and intrusive.
The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada is trying to stop the Conservative government from changing the census.
In July, the group filed papers in Federal Court calling for an injunction to block the Tories from eliminating the mandatory long census on the grounds the new policy is unconstitutional
Meanwhile, the 2011 voluntary census was shipped out for printing on Aug. 9, Hamel said in his affidavit.
"I cannot speculate on what the exact effort would be to go back to the original census plan or on the ability of contractors to meet new requirements as this was not assessed," Hamel wrote.
"Once it is sent to printer, no more changes can be introduced."