For Torontonians unfamiliar with the NCR, yes, Ottawa established a green belt way back when and it's mostly still green. Of course the suburbs jumped across it. Ottawa has been reasonably successful in getting suburbanites to commute on transit and they need to be kept willing. You can't compare the situation either to Toronto or other millionish Canadian cities, because none is configured the same way. Existing railway lines are all in the wrong place and don't go into the core, so the LRT is being built to play the role of "subway" backbone within the green belt, and of commuter rail without. So it runs past fields, pastures, parkland, bogs, whatever looks green on a satellite map.
Is that good or bad planning? It's a bit like arguing about the Chateau Laurier addition. Reading some Toronto critics talking about that suggests they have no inkling of the city's culture, to the same extent that looking at most of the proposed iterations of the design suggested the architect was in the same condition.