The CBC’s Alberta Political Compass Quiz Is Pure NDP Propaganda

Going into the 2023 Alberta provincial election, the Alberta NDP and its leader Rachel Notley has been working overtime to brand themselves as being a centrist and moderate political party despite the party’s obvious left-wing positions on economics and social issues. 

The CBC seems to be trying to assist the NDP in presenting it as a centrist party with its Alberta Political Compass online quiz. In ridiculous fashion, the CBC places the NDP as being slightly right-of-centre on economics and slightly more progressive than conservative on social issues. 

The CBC then pretends that the actual centrist party, the Alberta Party, is to the left of the NDP on economics and is a more socially progressive party. This in effect is trying to make voters uncomfortable with voting for the ideologically left-wing NDP from thinking the Alberta Party is a more moderate option if they also don’t want to vote for the United Conservative Party. 

The CBC is obviously trying to trick voters into thinking they are “moderate” for voting NDP while casting the UCP as radical on social issues, while holding only muted differences with the NDP on economic issues.

To be clear, the NDP is not just arguably left-wing on economics, they literally declare the party’s purpose in its constitution to “promote the principles of democratic socialism in Alberta.” Not exactly a party whose members watch a lot of Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell lectures.  

As someone who would describe themselves as fiscally conservative and a Baptist social conservative, apparently, according to the CBC quiz, I am more progressive than the UCP, a party led by the socially liberal Danielle Smith.

No doubt there are many socially conservative MLA candidates running for the UCP, but pretending the UCP is a hardline social conservative party akin to the Christian Heritage Party is ridiculous. The quiz seems to deliberately make respondents believe they are more socially left-wing than they really are. 

If you just flip through where the CBC thinks the NDP is on the issues you’d be confused as to where the NDP has ever said anything remotely close to where the CBC places them.

According to the CBC, the NDP is:

• Concerned about paying down the provincial debt (NDP has never committed more funds to pay down the debt)

• Strongly against mandatory vaccines for children (the NDP literally pushed a door-to-door COVID-19 vaccine plan for people refusing to take it and wanted vaccine clinics in schools, and were in favour of vaccine requirements to enter school buildings)

• Only somewhat against private sector involvement in the healthcare system

• Only somewhat against firearms ownership (NDP backs federal gun bans)

• Somewhat agree that free speech should not be restricted on university campuses (they have never stood up for censored academics)

• The NDP is not in favour of getting involved in the housing market (They have explicitly committed to subsidized housing projects)

• The NDP is somewhat in favour of private schools receiving provincial funding (The NDP is explicitly against charter schools and opposes school choice)

• The NDP want to take a somewhat tougher stance against the federal government (They have said nothing about pushing back on the federal government)

There are many more overtly silly positions the CBC claims the Alberta NDP has taken. Of course not all the positions they attribute to the NDP are wrong, but their left-wing stances have been massaged in such a way to pretend the NDP sits right in the middle of the political continuum.

It is blatant propaganda and a way to try and get voters on the fence to settle for the supposedly socially centrist and somewhat fiscally conservative NDP rather than the supposedly extremely socially conservative UCP, who supposedly bare little difference to the NDP on economics. 

In reality, the UCP is a mainly centre-right political party (depending on the MLA), the Alberta Party generally sites within the centre to centre-left, and the NDP would be mostly left-wing with some centre-left positions. 

UPDATE:
Below is a post from someone in response to our article, showing how drastically different the political compass appeared in the 2019 Alberta provincial election.