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 says it's no longer logistically possible to distribute the mandatory long census in the same format as previous national surveys.

Hamel makes the statement in documents filed last month in Federal Court.

His assertions were deposited as evidence by the government in response to a legal challenge by a francophone group fighting to save the mandatory long-form questionnaire.

The documents were obtained by The Canadian Press.

The court documents also say that Statistics Canada employees stopped preparation work on the 2011 long survey in May, a month before the census changes were made public.

Hamel wrote that Statistics Canada staff were given new marching orders in May to meet the government's demands.

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 Tories say they're scrapping the mandatory long questionnaire because they claim it's too coercive and intrusive.