The B.C. Government is bringing out the big political guns today to tout Vancouver’s “winning bid” for the 2014 Grey Cup game.

Now, I love Canadian football as much as anyone outside Saskatchewan can, but this was no bid. The CFL was desperate, and B.C. taxpayers ponied up $2.7 million to make it happen – on top of the half a billions dollars we paid to fix up B.C. Place Stadium. This is pretty much the definition of corporate welfare.

Why are taxpayers contributing anything to a profitable venture? From the Sun:

It will be good for [Lions owner and Senator] David Braley’s bottom line.

No figures are available from last year’s record-shattering blowout in Toronto, because private owners don’t have to divulge their balance sheets, but one report pegged Braley’s take to be as high as $10 million, after losing $3 million on the Argos during the regular season.

The last time someone other than the Lions/Argos owner played host to a Grey Cup, the Edmonton Eskimos made a $4-million profit from the 2010 week (despite a heavier than normal investment in the festival) — and, according to one source, cleared about $6 million on their previous Cup week in 2002, when they lost a home game to Montreal.

Bob Mackin, the intrepid investigative reporter who has dogged PavCo with the same ferocity Solomon Elimimian uses to crush quarterbacks (told you I was a fan!), first noted the $2.7 million Grey Cup grant last month. Read his latest piece here.

This is a disturbing trend with our supposedly “free enterprise” government: $2.7 million for a Grey Cup, $1.5 million for the Juno Awards (which, fortunately for taxpayers, Victoria lost out on), $11 million for the Times of India Film Bollywood Awards. Real free enterprisers would let these things stand or fail in their own, because we believe in the power of the marketplace to determine winners and losers – not government.

Go Lions.