Canadian Politics

In the last post I talked about how political parties packaged their message to encourage voters to support their party during an election. The message is a product of research not of belief or party ideals which are often different. This is the main reason that voters think politicians aren’t telling the truth. Every political party has a idealogical focus. This simply means that the members of that party believes that Governments should follow their beliefs. There can be and often is a disconnect between what a party runs on and what the party ideals are.

You may have heard of the term right wing or left wing parties. Right wing parties are conservative in their political positions. Conservative in a political party concept usually means that they believe in low taxes and small Government. Left wing parties are liberal in their political positions. This usually means that they will use tax dollars to provide a more inclusive Government. Because a party is called Conservative or Liberal doesn’t mean that they are the most conservative or the most liberal in their views far from it . There are parties that are extremely right or left. The governing parties are usually center left or center right. That means that they are either slightly right or left of the citizens.

Conservatives think that it should be every person for themselves and Government should only be concerned with law and order, trade, defense, immigration, foreign affairs, low taxes and so on. What they don’t want to do is provide is help for the poorer citizens like universal health care, employment insurance and child care. They do the social programs because if they don’t they won’t get elected. They would be considered to be center right. Currently they are farther right of center than they have been in the past.

The Liberals are generally more inclined to promote the use of tax payer dollars for social programs. They are likely to put tax payer dollars into education, health care, women and children’s programs etc. When they do this and try keep taxes at a reasonable level they would be considered to be left of center.

There are parties that are farther right and they want to deregulate everything and have very minimal government intervention. They believe that the free market system would take care of all the citizens needs. There are parties that are extreame left who want to regulate everything. Most citizens are not far from the center.

The parties that are further left that want the Government to intervene more. They want more regulation on companies for example on environmental issues. They also would like to have a national child care program, pharmacare, a poverty reduction program, increased educational opportunities and environmental solutions to name a few.

Lastly there are the one issue parties they only want to change one thing. An example would be the marijuana party who want to legalize marijuana. We can’t forget the humour parties that have a laugh at the expense of politicians.