Ottawa is still dealing with the consequences of active hostility during the Harris and then the Harper years. The LRT despite presumably sharing most of it's current deficits would have gone over a lot smoother if hurdman was able to realign using ncc land and phase 1 ended at lincoln fields.
On the other hand the modern standard of 'vision' is not all negative even if ambition has gotten less impressive and more practical. The CSST, the Expansion of the Capital Pathway/River Park Plans, or certainly the District energy system all pieces of infrastructure which similar sized metros in north america are getting nowhere near. The parlimenatry precint renewal is one of the most ambitious heritage resoration projects in the world and by the time it's finished will span four decades of activity.
After many years of talking about how to make things better in this city my honest feeling is that it is difficult for people who live and are of the 'urbanist' persuation to step away from an inferiority complex developed to a significant extent out of Montreal being so close and such a jewel. As a consquence there is this tendency to try to nail down a political pathology which can be solved via deliberative democracy for Ottawa to reverse the wrong course taken in the past. That isn't to say that things shouldn't be better or even that better leadership couldn't quite easily set a better course simply by being more ambitious in spirirt, however it probably means trying to minimize using the opportunities we have now to litigate the questions of the past. In IR discourse a cliche is quoting Clauswitz saying war is politics by other means but i feel it is really the inverse that is more true in domestic politics, i.e. that politics is war by other means. Wars are lost when people go into them trying to fight the last one.