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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.

“The integrity of how we appoint people to the highest court of our land is at issue,” said the NDP’s justice critic Murray Rankin during the meeting.

He added that it’s personal for him, as he was one of the two opposition members, along with Conservative MP Rob Nicholson, who sat on the nomination advisory committee on the agreement they keep the information secret.

“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.”

He also rebutted Liberal accusations that they were trying to haul journalists before the committee, saying he’s focused on who leaked the information, not on journalists for doing their job in publishing it.

“I want to hear from people in the Department of Justice,” Rankin said. “I want to hear from people in Prime Minister’s Office. Somebody leaked it. It was either my Conservative friend, myself, or an official.”

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.