Ember Handlebars Confusion With Passing In Values

I currently have a helper that looks like:

Ember.Handlebars.registerHelper('ifEq', function(a, b, opts) {
  if (a == b) {
    return opts.fn(this);
  } else {
    return opts.inverse(this);
  }
});

and in my template, I do

  GRAPH_TYPE: {{graphType}}
  {{#ifEq graphType "p_graph"}}
    TEST1
  {{else}}
    TEST2
  {{/ifEq}}

However, this displays

GRAPH_TYPE: p_graph TEST2

This leaves me confused as there should be an exact string match above.

So, I dug into the web inspector and noticed that the value of a in the Handlebars helper was of the value graphType. Why wasn't the value passed in and how do I ensure that it is passed in?