VANCOUVER - The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver may be Canada's Games, but if Canadian politicians want to experience the thrill of the events, they'll have to pay their own way.

The government has returned almost half of its tickets to the Games and anticipates giving back even more.

And the Minister of State for Sport is warning there will be no freebies.

"Senators, Members of Parliament and all government employees will be personally paying for their tickets,'' said Gary Lunn in a message to The Canadian Press.

"The cost will not be put on the taxpayer.''

Neither Lunn or his staff would explain why the government felt it couldn't use 1,000 of its 2,500 tickets nor why more might be returned.

His spokesperson said only that the entire ticket program hadn't been finalized.

The deadline to return more tickets has now passed, but organizers is setting up a resale market specifically for its sponsors and partners later this year.

The government, as well as Games sponsors and Olympic officials, buy tickets separately from the general public.

This gives them exclusive access to high-demand events, such as gold-medal hockey, where as much as 70 per cent of the seats are reserved for Olympic sponsors and other officials.

Those tickets are often used to court dignitaries, business leaders or major clients, as corporate hospitality programs are a major part of the Games.

But the downturn in the economy has bitten into those plans.

Lunn said some of the government's remaining pool of tickets will be used for hospitality, but he wouldn't discuss whether cuts to the program were being considered, even as the Harper government wrestles with a multi-billion dollar deficit.

"Almost all of the funding for the venues and all the money that we've put into the Olympics, it had all been accounted for well before we entered the downturn in the economy,'' Lunn said.

What some would view as cuts are really the reallocation of resources, said International Trade Minister Stockwell Day.

He cited the example of a $1 million CEO conference the federal government had planned for Games-time, but cancelled.

"We haven't made any changes related to money-saving, we're always looking at the best expenditure of our dollars,'' he said.

"We have a number of initiatives over the last year that have been presented, and the ones we deem to be the highest quality those are the ones we pursue so we can get the best results for the dollars that we're spending.''

The government has faced criticism that it isn't doing enough to capitalize on its investment in the Olympics.

Overall, it's spending around $1 billion dollars, including $290 million on the venues themselves.

Lunn said announcements were coming that would lay out the government's Games-time plan, but he wouldn't disclose any details.

There is an advertising campaign set for fall and the theme of this year's travelling Canada Pavilion, most recently set up at the Calgary Stampede, is the 2010 Games.

To date, the Department of International Trade says it has spent $150,000 on marketing materials with Games logos and the tag ``2010 reasons to do business in Canada.''

Day rattled off a list of several locations, among them Tokyo and Oslo, where 65 Olympic-themed events have been held as part of an overall strategy to sell Canada to foreign companies.

Embassies and missions have also hosted direct Olympic events, such as one-year countdown celebrations, some of which have received extensive local coverage, the department said.

"We are all over the place in terms of leveraging the Games,'' said Day.

A request under Access to Information for events held between October 2008 and March 2009 in Canadian embassies that referenced the Olympics came back with 27 listings.

They include a press release sent out to mark the one-year countdown to the Games, an article appearing in a local paper and the visit of a Nordic journalist to Kamloops, B.C.