The federal government, which once snatched up 2500 tickets for 2010 Vancouver Olympic tickets, is now returning 75 to 80 per cent of them for sale to the general public. The value of the remaining tickets is about $300,000, which is less than the $1 million bought by the B.C. government, and the $340,000 of tickets bought by the City of Vancouver.

Any temptation to give the federal government a round of applause should be tempered by a few other relevant facts. First, the "Feds' seat sale wins gold for good PR" as Don Martin of the Calgary Herald wrote. It always looks bad for politicians who sit in prime seats the general public never got a chance to get. It's one reason why NDP and Liberal MPs were forbade from snatching them up. (Not that a few didn't try. MP Joyce Murray asked for ten passes but got shot down, leaving Michael Ignatieff as the sole Liberal with priviledge).

Meanwhile the Bloc Quebecois has not hesitated to order some tickets. This is no shocker given that the Bloc has already made an Olympic sport of shamelessly getting as much out of Canada as possible despite the contradiction of fighting for as much autonomy as possible. For this, the Bloc's main competitor is the Assembly of First Nations.

Don Martin also says some Conservative MPs are quietly grumbling that they have to pay for these reserved tickets out of their own pockets. And with some events such as figure skating to cost $3,200, they say they can only afford to attend one or two events. (MPs make more than $150,000 annually, plus benefits, with taxpayers contributing four times as much to their pension as the MPs themselves).

Martin reports,

Clearly the cough-up-the-cash requirement has separated the seriously interested from the casual observers. MPs only bought a total of 222 tickets worth $66,000 while federal bureaucrats bought 268 tickets worth $127,000. Some 430 tickets worth $90,000 (obviously not the hottest events) were resold to federal partners and the rest returned to Vanoc.

It's not clear why bureaucrats deserve to be in line before anyone else. But at least this government didn't do what the Mulroney government did in 1988, when it snatched up 10,000 tickets for the Calgary Winter Olympics and also gave prime access passes to local MPs. If nothing else, this largesse achieved at least one thing: it made the current government's approach seem modest by comparison.