Truth, a statue at the entrance of the Supreme Court of Canada, is seen with the Peace Tower in background in Ottawa on May 7, 2010.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
A francophone group that was rebuffed in a court challenge over cancellation of the mandatory, long-form census has decided not to appeal the ruling.
Last week, the Federal Court dismissed the group's application for a judicial review of the government decision.
The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities doesn't have the resources to take the fight to the Federal Court of Appeal. "We brought this legal action as far as we could," said Marie-France Kenny, the federation's president.
The organization suggests Parliament is probably the better arena to fight the federal government's decision to scrap the mandatory long form. "This fight must take place at another time, on another field," it said in a news release.
Ms. Kenny said the federation will support others who are fighting the census changes. Aboriginal groups, for instance, have filed their own legal challenge.
Liberal MP Mauril Belanger commended the federation for its efforts and said the fight isn't over.
"We respect their decision and thank them for what they've done so far because they took this file to Federal Court and, I think, flagged certain legal obligations that the government of Canada has," he said.
The Liberals brought a motion before Parliament urging restoration of the long-form census. Although it passed the Commons, the government is free to ignore it. There is also a Liberal private member's bill to restore the long-form census.
Mr. Belanger said it may take a change of government to resurrect the long form.
"If we can't achieve our objective by judicial means or by legislating, we will do so once we form a government," he said. "We believe it's that important."
The federation, which promotes the rights and interests of French-speakers outside Quebec, argued in court that the long form is needed to produce accurate data about francophone minority communities.
The group said replacing the long form with a voluntary survey will yield less-reliable data and hurt the government's ability to meet its obligations under the Official Languages Act.
Mr. Justice Richard Boivin ruled last week that the Official Languages Act is silent on the census and he's not convinced that data from a voluntary survey will be useless.
"[The Act]doesn't require whatsoever the collection of data by way of the mandatory long questionnaire," Judge Boivin wrote in his decision.
He said there's uncertainty about the reliability of the data that will come from the voluntary National Household Survey in the next census.
But, he added, it's not clear that the information will be useless.
"This court is not convinced that the data from the NHS will be so unreliable as to be unusable."