There is a perception that a political spouse of this stature should be ribbon-cutting submissive, smile sweetly and keep her opinions to herself, and some Ottawa insiders are starting to wonder whether this bright, outspoken woman is a liability to her husband's political career. Says one disgruntled Liberal who doesn't want to be named, "She has the potential to overshadow him. The scuttlebutt here is that he's being cast in a role that's weak, a guy who lets his wife pick his clothes for him and asks her advice on policy – it doesn't play well for him."

On the other hand, there are other Ottawa politicos who say she's intelligent, confident and utterly charming, an asset to the leadership who brings a new dimension to a cookie-cutter role. MP Carolyn Bennett writes in an e-mail, "She's continental. And she can be a huge asset in bringing our caucus together."

Born in Alma, Que., in the district of Lac St. Jean, she grew up à la nature, as she puts it, in a house her parents built on the shore of the Saguenay River with her younger brother, Michel, now 50, and sister, Édith, now 48. The daughter of an Austrian photographer father who served in the German infantry on the eastern front during the Second World War, she remembers, "He hardly ever spoke of the war but was marked by it and had terrible nightmares all of his life. We would call that post-traumatic stress syndrome today." He met her French-Canadian mother, Thérèse Gagné, now 76, when he immigrated to Canada.

A natural athlete, Krieber remembers, "Summers were fantastic. We had a sailboat, a canoe, a motorboat and a kayak. In winter we crossed the ice to the ski hills on the other side." She was even skilled as a ski patroller at the age of 14. It was a utopia in some respects. But other childhood experiences shaped her in more profound ways. Lac St. Jean was the spiritual home for the separatist movement. Her brother, Michel, a financial analyst in Toronto, recalls, "Because of our last name, it was impressed upon us as kids that we weren't pur laine dyed-in-the-wool Québécois. I didn't like it. She didn't either."

Conversations at the Krieber family dinner table were lively, far-reaching and international in scope. "We were not debaters per se," says Michel. "But we would naturally adopt an examination of the issue at hand until all the pros and cons were covered."