Yesterday, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) held a roundtable on Parliament Hill, as part of its preparations for its Alternative Federal Budget initiative. Bruce Campbell is the Executive Director of the national office of the CCPA, and he wrote the following summary of the discussion for us.

Ed. Note: Roundtable participant Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens will appear on the Agenda this evening to discuss Davos, the Eurozone economic crisis and the risks to Canada

Yesterday’s roundtable brought together leading Canadian economists and international authorities to address the question: “The Global Economic Crisis: Can Canada Escape a Lost Decade?”

We were joined by three international economists: Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics at the University of Athens, expert on the Eurozone crisis, and author of The Global Minotaur: America, the true origins of the financial crisis, and the future of the world economy; Stephany Griffith Jones, international finance scholar, director of the financial markets initiative at Columbia University, and co-editor, with Joseph Stiglitz, of Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the World Financial Crisis; and Thomas Palley, research fellow at the New America Foundation, member of the Financial Times of London's Economists’ Forum, and author of the forthcoming book, From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and The Role of Economics.

There were some differences of views amongst the participants as to the nature of the global crisis, its causes, solutions to restore stability and fairness, and the likelihood that political leaders will make the necessary reforms to the system. There were also differences about whether the Eurozone situation would “blow up,” causing another global economic meltdown.

There was consensus, however, that the deregulated international financial and product markets have wreaked financial and economic havoc, but that solutions exist, and ideas for reform were put forward. There was also consensus amongst the economists that the free market ideas underpinning the global economy bear much responsibility for the current mess, and that they need to be replaced.

In the current depressed domestic and global environment, policies of fiscal austerity are self-defeating. They only prolong the current stagnation, or worse. Examples from the UK, Ireland, Greece, and other countries, illustrate the wrong-headedness of this approach, to say nothing of the devastating human suffering they inflict.

Finally, there was agreement that while many of these international problems are beyond Canada’s control, we are far from helpless. There is much our governments can do to weather the storm, speed up recovery, and invest in the building blocks for Canada’s long-term prosperity. These include policies that address the structural weaknesses in our economy—from productivity stagnation, to income inequality, to resource over dependency.