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This paper presents an assessment of the seismic performance of a ductile concrete core wall used as a seismic force resisting system for a 12-storey concrete office building in Montréal, designed according to the 2005 National building code of Canada (NBCC) and the 2004 Canadian Standards Association standard A23.3. The core wall consists of a cantilever wall system in one direction and a coupled wall system in the orthogonal direction. The building is analyzed in the nonlinear regime. The main conclusion from this work is that the capacity design shear envelope for the studied wall structure largely underestimates that predicted, primarily in the cantilever wall direction, and this in turn significantly increases the risk of shear failure. This issue is essentially due to (i) an underestimation by the new NBCC spectral response acceleration of the higher mode responses of a reinforced concrete wall structure whose seismic response is dominated by higher modes; and (ii) a deficiency in the capacity design method in estimating the wall shear demand on such walls, even when their behavior is lightly inelastic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]