OTTAWA—In early September, Conservative candidate Jennifer McAndrew stood outside a suburban Ottawa transit hub in the battleground riding of Kanata−Carleton to make a major campaign promise. “A Conservative government will support and prioritize Phase 3 of the LRT extension right here to Kanata and beyond,” a smiling McAndrew said in a video posted to her Facebook page on Sept. 2, just as the campaign was heating up. Not a day later, her Liberal opponent, Jenna Sudds, posted her own video to make the very same promise. While some transit advocates would be overjoyed to see cross−party commitments to build new light−rail infrastructure, it was a disappointment to Toronto transit researcher Stephen Wickens who spent more than a year warning governments against those kind of campaign promises. The reason is that Canada pays a higher price to build light−rail transit compared to our international counterparts, driven chiefly by the depth of …