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Political parties divided by approach to equality

I have just finished teaching a Canadian politics course and every year I have to teach the complicated history and story of Canadian political parties.
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I have just finished teaching a Canadian politics course and every year I have to teach the complicated history and story of Canadian political parties. Without doubt the whole subject can be confusing because the federal parties don't align well with the provincial parties.

I was reminded of how confusing this is when a Facebook post drew my attention to a comment made by Rosemary Burton on Power and Politics on the CBC.

The short video clip had Barton clarifying for her viewers that "... Christy Clark is a Liberal in B.C. but she is actually sort of a Conservative..." Barton's interviewee, Rachel Curran (Stephen Harper's former director of policy), clarified and said: "The B.C. Liberals are a coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives."

No wonder young people get confused about the parties - their names do little to help explain their positions on policy.

So, for the young person in your house who may be thinking about voting for the first time, a good exercise is to have them go to the political platform of each party and to help them look at the themes that the party is presenting. The platform is generally easier to start with than a debate or a political advertisement.

The campaign can be distinguished from the platform because the campaign is usually aimed at comparing or denouncing the other parties. The platform lays out what a party wants to do and it generally has a coherent narrative based on ideology, values and beliefs.

This week, I will provide a kind of Politics 101 to explain a bit about ideology and then next week I will take the party platforms and apply the ideas to the policies that the parties are putting forward in their platforms. This exercise should help a new voter to figure out what each party believes.

Parties are either on the left or the right side of the ideological spectrum, based mostly on their ideas about equality.

I teach it this way. Imagine a line drawn on the floor, like a starting line in a race. The race is represented by the market (i.e. the economy or capitalism) and I want to be able to run the race from the starting line.

There are three ways to think about equality in this race.

First is to say that if there are equal laws and rules in a society then everyone can run the race from the same point on the starting line. We call this "equality of right."

Those who hold this conception of equality tend to put a lot of emphasis on the individual responsibility for the choices one makes. They tend to want the state to stay out of the lives of individuals and the market but they also argue for a robust civil society.

Second is to say that not everyone gets to run the race on an equal footing.

People may have been disadvantaged by birth or circumstance and therefore the state should offer a way to equalize the opportunities for people to enter the race. Universal education and health care are good examples of the belief of equality of opportunity. The state has more involvement in creating a better context for individuals to become self-sufficient.

Third is to say that "the race" itself (i.e. capitalism) is inherently difficult and still fraught with perils and disadvantages.

Imagine a runner who begins the race but trips and falls coming out of the starting gate. People who are worried about the unfairness of the race itself want to make sure that the results of the race don't cause extreme disadvantage for any particular runners. They look to the equality of result (i.e. where did the people end up) and they want the state to provide some better assurances that people are not left behind.

I suspect from this description that you can see where the ideologies line up: conservatives tend to believe in the equality of right, although they share some buy-in that sometimes the state can provide services that help in supporting equality of opportunity.

Liberals tend to believe in equality of opportunity and the state's role in creating a more level playing field.

Social democrats are more concerned with equality of result, using the state as the mechanism to equalize unequal outcomes.

Next week, I will look at how the party platforms fit these descriptions to show how the parties represent different ideas of equality.