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Sometime before Canada Day, Ottawa’s population will hit one million.

That’s the best estimate of city planners, who are pumped by the prospect and preparing for the changes it will bring.

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“After years of thinking about it, we are actually going to hit it this year,” says Stephen Willis, the city’s general manager of planning, infrastructure and economic development.

“It puts us in a different league of North American cities.”

“It puts us in a different league of North American cities.”

One million is a critical mass that makes it easier to develop things associated with big cities, especially mass transit, Willis says.

“You also get a base population that can support a lot more cultural activities, and sports and other things, because you have the population to attract the types of events that wouldn’t necessarily stop in a midsize city. They start pay more attention to us after a million.”

The city is consulting the public on a new official plan that will guide the city’s development for the next 25 years. And Ottawa’s multi-billion-dollar light-rail transit system, the biggest construction program in the city’s history, is being built.