@angelorange: fair enough, training is a key thing. However flying 1500 hours around a circuit is not training how fly airliners in a multi crew environment. But yes, some airlines apparently save quite some money by not training enough.
@KAG, both FO's were cadets or 200 hour wonders. However one of them was an active glider pilot (the one with least experience), the other one kept his SEP rating active which means he flew outside of his job as well. If you mean that both had no other professional experience you are right, but both had flying experience beside their airbus flying.
Curious that you mention the canadian system. We send about 50 of our pilots over there every winter to help during high season traffic with various 737 operators. Half of those pilots will fly as captains, the other ones as senior FO's. All of them are 200 hour wonders, some even MPL-graduates, every year a few more.
I could cite quite a few accidents with pilots which had thousands of hours upon hiring and extensive professional experience in different types and still managed to crash healthy planes. I wouldn't begin to blame it on them flying around a circuit for 1500 hours or more or even flying around battlefields without being able to transfer their skills to the airline world. And then there are a few accidents with cadet pilots as well. However, seen in the general number of things only a few.
It is about the right amount and quality of training and selection, not about hours. Something the military discovered long ago and which some airlines managed to adapt to their needs, and some didn't. Even the new american rules from what i read will give a huge hour discount to those doing an integrated training syllabus with a respected training organization like embry riddle for example.