Over the intervening months, it has been tempting to explain the Liberals' performance as mere breathtaking cynicism: the party that campaigned against major spending cuts, then cut $14-billion; that promised job security to public servants, then sacked 45,000; that vowed to "abrogate" NAFTA unless it was amended to its designs, then signed it word for word as negotiated; that railed against the policy of price stability, then claimed it as its own; that once stood for a strong federal government, and now packs it up in crates addressed to the provinces.

Increasingly, however, one is drawn to a more plausible explanation: They're not dishonest, just extremely forgetful. Medical science is familiar with patients who cannot retain memories for more than about 30 seconds; each time they meet a friend, even a family member, it is as if for the very first time. Something like the same affliction seems to have overtaken senior ministers in the Chretien cabinet. The government appears incapable of holding an idea in its head for more than 24 hours. In the Prime Minister's case, even a single speech appears to be too taxing.

For a day or two a month ago, some ministers took an interest in the question of the right of secession, and whether that applied as much, if at all, to minorities within Quebec as it did to Quebec as a whole. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said it did. So did the Prime Minister. Hardly had the Earth had time to circle the sun, however, before the entire issue vanished. Indeed, the Prime Minister stoutly denied it had ever been discussed. At the time, I thought he was just playing politics, popping his own trial balloons. Now I think he really and truly believed what he was saying.

Indeed, the government's memory seems to grow shorter by the day. Going into a cabinet meeting last week, Justice Minister Allan Rock confirmed news reports that the government was considering a Supreme Court reference on the legality of secession. By the time he emerged, this had been completely forgotten: What had previously been asserted as fact was now dismissed as "pure speculation." Poof - disappeared down the memory hole.

With the arrival of the Throne Speech, the half-life of government statements had been reduced to about a half an hour. Where the speech seemed to suggest a national referendum of some sorts on the unity question, the same idea was more or less instantaneously ruled out by Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps - only to be reaffirmed a day later by Mr. Dion. But that was Wednesday. By Thursday, the referendum had been superseded by talk of a snap election in the fall. Of course, that would depend upon the government remembering to call it.

This mysterious collective amnesia in the cabinet is not confined to the national-unity file. Scant weeks ago, the Human Resources Minister was proposing a new national shared-cost program. If not quite the grand day- care plan the Liberals had promised in the election, it showed at least a vague familiarity with established Liberal policy; if the government could not place the name, it at least recognized the face.

Yet this remission was only temporary. Apparently unaware that it had ever held the contrary idea, the federal government solemnly promised in the Throne Speech that it would never introduce a national shared-cost program without the consent of the provinces (or even with it; provinces that so wished could opt out with compensation). Alarming, isn't it?

It is the Prime Minister's condition, however, that is the greatest cause for concern. It is one thing for Mr. Chretien to forget events of the recent past - to boast on Page 1 of his speech to the Commons Wednesday, for example, that "half a million new jobs have been created in the Canadian economy" in the past three years, only to challenge the private sector, on Page 4, "to deliver" on job creation, since, after all, "government does not create jobs" (Page 3), except when it does (the National Infrastructure Program, which "created thousands of new jobs" on Page 2).

But it is another matter altogether for the Prime Minister to remember things that never happened. Apparently the government has "broken the back" of the deficit, having brought it all the way back to $33-billion, which is about $4-billion more than it was when the Tories claimed to see its spine cracking.

When, therefore, the Prime Minister proclaims that "no one . . . can question the honesty and integrity of this government and its ministers" (this, having appointed his press secretary as Governor-General, his speech-writer to head an inquiry into Canada Post, his nephew as ambassador to Washington - oh, never mind), it is hard to contradict him. At least, I believe that he believes it. . .