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It was the moment when a bad week for the Liberal government's Quebec strategy got worse.

BELINDA STRONACH'S job in Paul MARTIN's cabinet will last, barring catastrophe, for the life of this minority Liberal government. Perhaps even longer if the Liberals win re-election.

HOW BRUTAL is BRITISH COLUMBIA political life? Consider Liberal Premier Gordon CAMPBELL, who has survived - so far, and notwithstanding a disastrous drunk driving conviction - his first term in office.

Long before New Brunswick Liberal cabinet minister Camille Thériault formally announced his bid for his party's - and the province's - top job on Jan. 26, his leadership ambitions were a badly kept secret.

On the crisp wintry morning after the televised leaders debate that was supposed to save his sinking election campaign, Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest took his remaining hopes home to the comfort of Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

Just past the halfway point in the four-week Ontario election campaign, nastiness was lurking around every corner. Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty accused Premier Mike HARRIS of lying baldly and of pitting Ontarians against each other in a callous bid for votes.

It was 11:30 on the morning after the New Brunswick Liberal party's third consecutive election landslide, but Frank McKenna was still celebrating - his way. Operating on just 4½ hours of sleep, he had followed his usual morning ritual: after waking at six a.m.

THE PAUL MARTIN TEAM spent a year and a half and $60 million of taxpayer money trying to prove that the squalid epoch when political favours could be traded for Liberal party advantage was over. Then Tim Murphy sat down for tea with Gurmant Grewal.

The new Maritime quest for unity began during those achingly anxious hours when Quebecers counted their ballots and decided the fate of the entire country. As the tally in last October's referendum seesawed back and forth, Liberal MP George Rideout, a former mayor of Moncton, N.B.

Among political strategists, it is sometimes known as "the barbecue factor": the manner in which a once-hot candidate ends up cooked on election day. The principal example, one that many of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's strategists recall with a shudder, is former Ontario Liberal leader Lyn McLeod.

At moments during last week's Liberal nomination meeting in the provincial riding of Humber East in Corner Brook, Nfld., the spirit of the legendary Joey Smallwood seemed to permeate the room. At the microphone, a pumped-up Brian Tobin, in a pugilist's stance, was in full rhetorical flight.

It should have been a simple question for a man accustomed to the black art of political gamesmanship. What can the other contenders for Jean CHRÉTIEN's throne do to give former finance minister Paul MARTIN a run for his millions? But this seasoned LIBERAL PARTY strategist seemed stumped.

It was, as Mike Harris always predicted, nothing less than a revolution.

It was a short-lived fiasco that federal Liberals prefer to look upon as a petit faux pas.