OTTAWA — Federal Court Justice Roza Aronovitch will decide Wednesday whether to accelerate a hearing on a request seeking an injunction on the Harper government's decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census.

The government is being taken to court by the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada over the decision. The injunction seeks to protect the data gathered from the census which they say is used to guide services for minority French-language communities.

The federation has filed an affidavit from a former Statistics Canada employee who said the court's decision must be settled by mid-October in order to ensure that the government has time to save the long-form census in questionnaires for 2011. Under the federation's proposed timeline, the lawyers from both sides would have until Aug. 20 to submit arguments leading up to a hearing before Sept. 20.

Government lawyer Claude Joyal proposed on Tuesday that the case should not be heard before Oct. 19, suggesting the federation's proposed timeline was like being asked "to fit an elephant into a box."

However, Aronovitch told Joyal that the government had access to all the experts it needed and would have to demonstrate why it requires more time to prepare.

Rupert Baudais, the lawyer for the federation, also noted that his group had not provoked the urgency of hearing the case since the government waited until the end of June to announce its decision on the long-form census.

The federation's director, Suzanne Bosse, said she was confident that the federation has demonstrated the urgency of settling the case as soon as possible. She said her federation has received numerous letters of support from other groups that want to protect the long-form census. The Quebec Community Groups Network, which represents minority anglophone communities in Quebec, has also urged the government to reverse its decision.

The government has been blasted by critics for more than a month since the decision to scrap the long-form census was made public. A range of interest groups, businesses, academics and statisticians says the data gleaned from a voluntary survey will be biased and is not equivalent to the information collected and widely used through the long-form census.

The federation is also requesting government funding through a language rights program to cover its legal costs in the case and is expecting to find out in September whether it will get the funding.

The federation has argued that the government's decision to scrap the long-form census violates the government's obligations under the Official Languages Act.