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Canada and Ottawa both have more bilingual residents than ever before, according to Statistics Canada figures released Wednesday.

Good news for Canada 150, right? Not really, say experts, who find the numbers underwhelming and say the rate of bilingualism in the capital has basically flatlined for the past 15 years.

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“It’s the highest proportion ever. But it’s still not that much,” says John Trent, a senior fellow at the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa.

What growth there has been in Canadian bilingualism is coming from Quebec.

In that province, there were 3.6 million bilingual people in 2016 — almost 300,000 more since 2011, according to the new census data.

English-French bilingualism reached 18 per cent across Canada, meanwhile, up from 17.5 per cent in 2011.

The increase across Canada represents more than 455,000 more English-French bilingual people in the past five years.