The English-language version of the first throne speech from Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government clocked in at 1,673 words – a light read compared to the 7,149-word tome that Harper handed to the Governor General in 2013.
- Read more about the speech from the throne
- Throne speech checklist: which campaign promises did the Trudeau government reaffirm?
The speech from the throne delivered Friday – the 148th in Canada’s history – was less than a quarter of the length of Harper’s and took Gov. Gen. David Johnston about 15 minutes to read on Friday.
Here’s a look at the 100 words most frequently used in the speech (minus some common stop words like “a,” “the,” “our,” etc.)
Looking at word frequency, the top 10 words of the speech were:
- Government
- Canadian(s)
- Canada(’s)
- Work
- Make
- Know
- First
- Economic
- New
- Support (tied with six others)
And though this speech drastically differed in length from 2013’s speech, many of the same words appeared in the Harper government’s top 10:
- Government
- Canadian(s)
- Canada(’s)
- New
- Work
- Jobs
- World
- Families
- Continue
- Communities
The two also had a very similar favourite three-word-phrase that was uttered most often in their speeches:
- Harper most commonly said: “Our government will”
- Trudeau most commonly said: “The government will”
And according to these quick facts, the Trudeau government’s terse speech was more in line with the 19th-century way of doing things:
- The average number of words in the first 10 throne speeches: 854
- The average number of words in the last 10 throne speeches: 4,346
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Full text of the speech from the throne: http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/full-text-of-the-throne-speech-1.2687186
Full text of the 2013 speech from the throne: http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Documents/ThroneSpeech/41-2-e.html
The Senate’s “Speech from the Throne” primer: http://sen.parl.gc.ca/portal/infographics/SenCA-infographic-SFT-e.htm
