In an hour-long meeting that consisted mostly of partisan bickering, the Liberals used their 5-4 majority on the committee to reject the motion
OTTAWA — Liberal MPs have spiked a motion that would have seen the Commons justice committee hold hearings on the leak of information about the last selection process for the Supreme Court of Canada — a leak widely viewed as a political attack on former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.
In late March, while the SNC-Lavalin affair was at full boil, CTV News and The Canadian Press both reported — citing anonymous sources — that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had disagreed with Wilson-Raybould’s choice to replace chief justice Beverley McLachlin on the court in 2017. Wilson-Raybould had preferred Manitoba Chief Justice Glenn Joyal, the reports said, but Trudeau rejected that choice because he saw Joyal as too critical of how courts apply the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
At Wednesday’s committee meeting, opposition members argued that this appeared to be the only real chance to get to the bottom of the matter. “I am under a cloud of suspicion, as is my colleague from the Conservative Party,” he said. “I was prepared to go to my grave with the information as to who were the finalists in the process.”
Liberal MPs said they were rejecting the motion because the committee is a poor venue for investigating the leak, and pointed out there were also leaks of information over the botched 2013 Supreme Court nomination of Marc Nadon at a time when a Conservative government was in power.
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