PETER MANSBRIDGE: Now to Ottawa, and if the federal Liberals expected things to be back to normal after last week's public squabbling, it hasn't happened. As Paul Hunter reports, there's still plenty of tension in the air.

PAUL HUNTER (Reporter): Forgive the federal Liberals if they thought the tough part of the day would be this morning's Cabinet meeting. After all, two high-profile Ministers have been publicly fighting over party rules, though today publicly avoiding the subject when asked about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN (1): How was your Cabinet meeting, sir?

ALLAN ROCK (Minister of Industry): Why do you ask?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN (1): No reason! Just wondering about your seat mate and how you got along.

ROCK: Any questions?

HUNTER: Both Allan Rock and his feuding counterpart Paul Martin eased up on the rhetoric.

PAUL MARTIN (Minister of Finance): We sat beside each other in the room.

HUNTER: So was that the end of Liberal strife? Not by a long shot. Up next, two opposition MPs taking another backroom Liberal battle into the spotlight.

LORNE NYSTROM (Saskatchewan NDP MP): It's really what I would call Parliamentary thuggery to have this kind of thing happen.

HUNTER: The thuggery, they say, was Liberal strong-arming as the Commons Finance Committee named a new chair with the favoured candidate a big supporter of Finance Minister Martin.

RON CULLEN (Ontario Liberal MP): I had some very good vibes that the committee chair was mine.

HUNTER: The suggestion is this woman, Liberal Marlene Catterall, was instead pushing hard for the Prime Minister's choice as chair, even threatening a federal Liberal MP with her Parliamentary Secretary job if she didn't vote the right way. Later, denied by Sophie Leung.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (1): But did she tell you you'd lose your position as Parliamentary Secretary?

SOPHIE LEUNG (Parliamentary Secretary): No.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (1): She didn't.

LEUNG: I want to repeat again, no.

HUNTER: And by Catterall.

MARLENE CATTERALL (Liberal MP): A press conference based on very creative interpretation of facts. It was a wonderful fairy tale.

HUNTER: Still, the Liberal who thought he'd get the job somehow didn't.

CULLEN: Suddenly the sand started to shift. What caused that shift, I don't know.

HUNTER: Whatever really happened, the fallout for the once trouble-free Liberals is yet more dirty laundry and an out of the blue easy target to the opposition.

SCOTT BRYSON (Nova Scotia PC-DR MP): It seems that every level of Parliamentary process in Ottawa currently is dominated by this infighting.

HUNTER: If the Prime Minister's Office is behind what happened at the Finance Committee, and thus behind this latest infighting, it may signal the Prime Minister's willing to show things will happen his way, no matter the fallout in Parliament, his party, or in public. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Ottawa.