Reality check: Ignatieff snags flip-flop gold. Tough-talking Liberals fleeing Hill for Olympic junkets

From the curling rink to the athletes’ village, Ignatieff and the Liberal team will be abandoning their post on Parliament Hill to make the scene at Olympic venues:

“Leader Michael Ignatieff will use the special pass put at his disposal to be present for about three days at the start of the Games and again toward the end. But he will ‘not be running after the cameras,’ a party official said.” – Globe and Mail, 5 February 2009

“An email mysteriously arrived in my inbox showing that [Liberal] MP Joyce Murray requested 10 distinguished guest passes and five upgraded access passes for the Games ‘so that Liberal parliamentarians can have some representation’ at the events.” – Don Martin, National Post, 4 February 2010.

Liberals sure are excited! But hold on one one-hundredth-of-a-second.

Wasn’t it only four weeks ago, as the public outcry against Harper’s prorogation was picking up, that Michael Ignatieff sternly boasted to the press that every Liberal MP would be channeling Canadians’ outrage into hard work in Ottawa – right through the Olympics?

“ ‘We will be working, in other words, right through the Olympics, which is what we think Canadians want to see,’ he said. When asked if he truly expected all Liberal politicians to be in Ottawa throughout prorogation, Mr. Ignatieff replied: ‘We don’t play half team. We all show up. And we are not just showing up for a photo op. We are showing up to go to work’.” - Michael Ignatieff as quoted in the Globe and Mail, 8 January 2010

If Liberals intended to go to the Olympics, why did Michael Ignatieff say they would be “showing up to work” in Ottawa?