[ghettoCoder]

Fellow Ottawan (is that what we call ourselves?) here who also relocated from Northern Ontario many moons ago. The thing about Ottawa is it's a government town so most of the local tech firms (not including Shopify Mitel, etc...) are for professional services or are small early-stage startup (for some reason our startups typically get acquired, or fail). The Feds' fiscal year starts in April which means that contract money is either currently frozen or non-existent until then. After April all departments will start hiring again and you should have some luck if you get yourself into one of the better professional services company.

The other "problem" in Ottawa is that ALL of the professional services firms will do a hard filter-out on keywords in your resume/cover letter. And they expect a certain format due to what the Feds want in their submission.

Disclaimer: I don't work for the Feds. I know better.