Liberals on the House justice committee voted down a request to investigate last month’s leak of confidential details around former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s preferred pick for the Supreme Court.

The motion, put forward by Conservative MP Michael Cooper, was for the committee to examine the leak of confidential information around Manitoba Chief Justice Glenn Joyal as a potential pick for the top court.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould reportedly disagreed on who to appoint to fill the vacancy left by retiring Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in 2017, suggesting there were rifts in their relationship well before the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Liberal MPs said the committee was not an appropriate venue to hold such an investigation and that it would amount to hauling journalists in and forcing them to testify.

“This is really becoming an abuse of process, when we’re trying to politicize everything,” said Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, who argued that a study would be “tantamount to investigating journalists.”

Cooper and other opposition MPs said hearing from journalists who received the leaks was nonsense and instead wanted to get to who did the leaking.

They questioned whether the Liberals were serious about the breach of confidentiality in the judicial appointments process since there is no other investigation into the leaks by the Prime Minister’s Office or justice ministerial officials.

The federal privacy commissioner, though, is investigating whether Joyal’s privacy rights were violated.

Cooper said after the meeting, which involved cross talk usually reserved for question period, that it wasn’t surprising the Liberals used their majority to vote his motion down.

“They just want to cover this up and hope that it’s going to go away,” he said. “We do need to get answers as to who was the source of a leak that has undermined the integrity of the appointments process and cast a shadow on a distinguished jurist.”

In late March, CTV and the Canadian Press reported that Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould disagreed on whether Manitoba judge Glenn Joyal should be named to fill a vacancy on the country’s highest court.

Joyal, Wilson-Raybould’s reported preference, later responded that he withdrew his name from consideration because his wife had cancer.

Justice Richard Wagner was eventually elevated to the chief justice role and Alberta judge Sheilah Martin was appointed to the top court.

The judicial appointments process is subject to extreme confidentiality in order to preserve its integrity, and the leak was immediately condemned by the legal community, Trudeau, Wilson-Raybould, Justice Minister David Lametti and opposition MPs.

Conservative justice critic Lisa Raitt suggested the Prime Minister’s Office was to blame for the leak, though Trudeau vigorously denied this. Wilson-Raybould also denied leaking the information and said the breach of confidentiality should be investigated.

The Globe and Mail later reported, citing an anonymous source, that Wilson-Raybould wanted Joyal to become chief justice of the Supreme Court in order to place a judge with progressive views on the top court and make way for Canada’s first Indigenous chief justice of a superior court.

Ehsassi and other Liberals also said they believed additional safeguards would eventually be put in place to stop leaks, which opposition MPs responded to with disbelief.