The Leader of the Federal Conservatives is disappointed but not surprised that Liberal members of the Commons ethics committee have blocked an attempt to hear from ethics commissioner Mario Dion.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Andrew Scheer says its standard procedure to have the ethics commissioner speak to the committee after issuing a report.

“And the fact that the Liberals have shut this down tells you the lengths that they are willing to go to keep their corruption hidden,” he said. “What we wanted to know is more detail about what led him to the conclusion that Justin Trudeau broke the law.”

Scheer says Dion’s report paints a picture about a back and forth between the PMO and SNC Lavalin executives.

“[SNC] were the defendants in a criminal court case,” Scheer noted. “So when you have people in the Prime Minister’s Office putting pressure on the prosecutor in the Attorney General and at the same time coming up with a scheme or a strategy with the defendant, that to me is very serious and that’s why we wanted to have him at committee to explain more about what went on.”

Only one of the six Liberals on the Commons ethics committee voted to support an opposition motion to hear from Mario Dion. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith says that’s in the interest of transparency and because he thinks Dion made errors in his report.

Dion released a scathing report last week that concluded Prime Minister Justin Trudeau breached a section of the ethics code by improperly pressuring former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to end criminal proceedings on corruption charges against Montreal engineering giant SNC Lavalin.