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Ottawa will have to have a bylaw on offering city services in English and French if a new bill proposed by Ottawa-Vanier MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers passes.

The city already has one, so that’s pretty much that.

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The demand to make Ottawa officially bilingual is stronger among the city’s francophones than most Anglos realize: it comes up in every election in Ottawa-Vanier and Orléans, usually in all-candidates’ debates where questioners tend to be baffled that something so obviously proper hasn’t been done yet.

The idea surged this year as something the city or the province might do, or that the federal government might push for, to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary. Specifically, Des Rosiers’ bill responds to demands from the largely francophone group Bilingual Ottawa Bilingue to revise the City of Ottawa Act, the provincial law that’s effectively the city’s constitution, to more deeply entrench bilingualism. Though it doesn’t remotely give the group, which organized a city hall rally on Wednesday, what it’s asking for, which is “to make Ottawa officially bilingual with English and French having equal status, rights and privileges plus creating a formal mechanism to ensure proactive oversight and adherence to policy and the law.”