This Article shall present a detailed analysis of Equality Rights in the United States and Canada, and their relationship to race based government affirmative action programs as practiced in those two countries. At its most basic level, Equality Rights can be defined generally as the idea that a government must not discriminate against its citizens (i.e. treat some of them differently from others). Yet given this general definition of Equality Rights, how can one reconcile the concept with that of race based affirmative action programs? As this Article shall demonstrate, via its survey of the radically opposed American and Canadian national approaches, the promotion of Equality Rights is inconsistent with the support of formerly disenfranchised minority groups via ameliorative race based government affirmative action programs. Both national approaches, American and Canadian, swing between opposite ends of the pendulum. The American approach towards Equality Rights, in looking to the concept of equal treatment (for all citizens) as its point of departure, results in a piecemeal approach (in its affirmative action programs). On the other hand, the Canadian approach looking to the idea of the amelioration of past discrimination (at the expense of a formalistic definition of Equality Rights as constituting equal treatment under the law) as its point of departure results in a much more favorable judicially constructed framework for government affirmative action programs. Just as with the American approach however, there is a tradeoff involved, as the Canadian approach results in an environment much less inclined to take seriously dissenting arguments that such programs result in an environment where the state, in looking to assist formerly disenfranchised minorities, ends up doing so at the cost of treating its citizens unequally.