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The circus isn’t just in town — it’s in Ottawa. Federal bureaucrats have been living it up, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tickets to concerts, sports games, musicals, and even circuses, all on the taxpayer dime.  Bureaucrats burned through $721,000 in event tickets between January 2023 and June 2024, according to government records exposed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's investigative journalist, Ryan Thorpe. 

“While bureaucrats were busy hiking taxes and ignoring our calls, they were charging us for nights out at the circus, concerts, and hockey games,” blasted Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Taxpayers might think this government is a circus — and these bureaucrats just confirmed it by charging us for circus tickets.”

Among the outrageous expenses: Global Affairs Canada (GAC) dropped nearly $7,000 on Cirque du Soleil tickets in Austria, while also shelling out thousands on shows in South Korea, Australia, and the U.S.

Let’s not forget the $20,000 spent on a ball in Taiwan or the $8,000 table at a Toronto event. Meanwhile, Canada Post, which suffered a $748 million loss in 2023, wouldn’t even disclose how much it wasted on tickets.

“Taxpayers struggling to fill the fridge are being forced to pay for bureaucrats’ fun nights out,” Terrazzano said. “These clowns should at least pay for their own circus tickets.”