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MONTREAL — Nobel prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz says the NDP is in a good position to avoid the mistakes of other social democratic parties as it considers taking a more moderate path towards the next election.

More than 2,000 party members are assembled at the cavernous Palais de Congres to debate policy. The former adviser to U.S. President Bill Clinton opened the event with a keynote speech.

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In an interview beforehand with The Canadian Press, Stiglitz said that other social democratic parties in Europe and in North America veered too far to the right, allowing for too much financial deregulation and in some cases too much privatization.

The NDP, which has never formed a federal government, is only now considering moving away from core tenets such as social ownership.

“One of the advantages you might say of coming late to that is you can see what worked and what didn’t,” said Stiglitz, author of the bestseller The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.