Questions are being raised over the nearly 2,000 tickets for the Vancouver Olympics that have been reserved for people working in government agencies, including members of parliament and senators.

The Canadian Heritage Department spent $447,000 for tickets that MPs and senators will be able to buy, which included tickets for some of the most popular events, including the opening and closing ceremonies.

Of those, more than 1,200 of the Olympics tickets were for hockey, alpine skiing, figure skating, speed skating and curling, with smaller numbers for low-profile events, the Canadian Press reported.

The government buy included 444 tickets for the ice hockey competitions alone, according to an accounting provided by Canadian Heritage.

“It's a classic case of government favouritism,” said Maureen Bader, B.C Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

"We all know here in Vancouver and B.C. how really difficult it is for the average person to get a ticket. It's a complicated lottery system, and you may or may not be able to get a ticket," Bader said. "It's just not right."

Of the 1.6 million Olympic tickets printed, 896,000 were made available to Canadian residents. The rest were reserved for government and corporate sponsors, Olympic and sport organizations of other countries, athletes and their families, media broadcasting the games and residents of other countries.

Ticket advantage unfair, MP says

Ontario NDP MP Charlie Angus said parliamentarians should not have an unfair advantage when it comes to the tickets.

"It's like who gets to the front of the line? The members of Parliament are being treated as a special class," he said. "And who's going to get the majority of these tickets? The Conservatives."

New Democrat MP Pat Martin added: "The minister [James Moore] is shelling out half a million dollars worth of swag when taxpayers who paid for the whole show can't get tickets for love nor money."

But Sport Minister Gary Lunn stressed on Wednesday that “every single ticket for parliamentarians and government officials is going to be paid for by themselves, not the taxpayer.”

Lunn said the tickets will be allotted proportionately to the political parties, and it will be up to each individual party to hand out the tickets to its members. Lunn said that for the Conservative party, if there's a dispute over who gets what, the matter will be decided by a draw.

With files from The Canadian Press