A planned ad campaign to rally support for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver has been scrapped by the Conservative government, which has been under attack for allegedly using taxpayer dollars for partisan politics.

The $10-million campaign was shelved in favour of spending the money on H1N1 prevention, Minister for Sport Gary Lunn said Wednesday in Vancouver.

"They looked at this and felt that in the government advertising plan, it was a much higher priority to get the H1N1 message out, so that's where they moved it," he said in an interview.

The government's advertising budget has become a politically charged subject this year after the Conservatives rolled out an unprecedented government-wide campaign in September touting their big-spending January budget.

The initial $34-million budget for that campaign dwarfed the $6.5 million the government had set aside to promote public awareness of the growing H1N1 pandemic.

And critics, including non-partisan media watchers and fiscal conservatives, said the advertising for the Economic Action Plan — complete with a Tory-blue website wall-papered with photos of Prime Minister Stephen Harper — clearly crossed the line into feel-good, partisan party promotion at taxpayer expense.

The Olympic ads were supposed to begin running this fall with the start of the torch relay on Oct. 30. The government is paying $24.5 million to support the relay, but the ads failed to appear.

The marketing firm said the contract was officially cancelled two or three weeks ago.