I would agree with the assessment. One of the issues is that the longer individuals are unemployed, the more their skills atrophy; they lose workplace attachment, and it's a self-reinforcing process. I will give you one figure. We have to work on the issues in Canada, so it's not just about being better than the U.S. But to give a sense of the depth of the U.S. recession and the weakness of the recovery, the analogous figure in the U.S. is over 40% long-term unemployed. This is a real issue. To give you an insight in terms of the strength of federal monetary policy, it is in part conditioned on the danger that the 40% long-term unemployed in the U.S. will become, effectively, permanently unemployable, to put it in its starkest terms.
On February 12th, 2013. See this statement in context.