Hour 1 of Ottawa Now for Thurs. April 30th, 2026

Kristy Cameron might not be at 100 percent, but she is reporting for duty on this Thursday afternoon. And if you work in a certain section of Downtown Ottawa, you might be getting a wicked headache trying to find a place to park. Should your employer order you back to the office if there’s hardly any parking available? At the moment, federal government employees are reporting to their office workstations 3 days per week. That will change to 4 days per week in July. And employees at the DND offices are already struggling to find a precious lot of parking real estate, largely due to ongoing shortages. Kristy checks in with June Winger, the National President of the Union of National Defense Employees. They represent 20,000 DND employees across Canada and nearly 3,000 of them reside at the Carling Campus. In Hour 2, we circle back and pick the brain of former DND employee Brent Charron, who worked many years at the Carling location before retiring in March. Meantime, the number of families who are experiencing homelessness in our city has surged by 76 percent since 2023. And as we find out from CFRA’s Andrew Pinsent, a pair of City Staff reports paint a stark picture of a system that is running out of racetrack. But first, we bring you up to speed on today’s top headlines.