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The idea of declaring Ottawa an officially bilingual city in a provincial law has no support among the politicians who’d need to back it to make it happen.

It comes up every few years. The latest reason to consider it is that 2017 will be Canada’s 150th anniversary. “It is the capital of Canada and, as such, it has to reflect the existence of English- and French-Canadians,” francophone stalwart Jacques de Courville Nicol told the Citizen‘s Marie-Danielle Smith this week. He started a renewed movement in May to get bilingualism for Ottawa entrenched in the law, with 2017 as the target.

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Ottawa debated this just after amalgamation in 2001 and city council agreed on a policy that spring. Its first sentence: “The City of Ottawa recognizes both official languages as having the same rights, status and privileges.”

The policy goes on at length about just what that means. Highlights include encouraging city employees to work in either English or French, requiring the top three layers of management to speak both languages, and requiring bilingual services to the public from any group that’s more than 30 per cent funded by the city.