Canada

The most frequent words in the 2011 budget speeches

A look at words used frequently in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget speeches in 2011.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty introduced the Conservative majority government's first budget on Monday. It came less than three months after Flaherty introduced his previous budget, which was never passed.

In the text of his speech Monday, the words that appear most frequently are support and economic.

The images below, first for Monday's speech and second for the March 22 speech, show the 50 most frequently used words in both speeches. The more often a word was used, the larger it appears in the image. Common words such as "Economic Action Plan," government, Canada and Canadians do not appear. The word cloud was created using Wordle.

These are the words that were most frequently used in speech Monday, and the number of times they appeared:

  • Economic: 9
  • Support: 9
  • Tax: 7
  • Seniors: 7

These are the words that were most frequently used in the March 22 speech, and the number of times they appeared:

  • Jobs: 26
  • Support: 20
  • Help: 20
  • Families: 18
  • New: 18
  • Tax: 14

How the 2010 speech compares

In the minister's 2010 budget speech, the most used words were:

  •  Jobs:  29 
  •  Business/businesses: 22 
  •  Economy: 15
  • Tax: 14