It has to be a direction of the House. That would be interesting if we put leg irons on the Prime Minister's key spokesman, wouldn't it?
The other difficulty here, though, is in terms of the individuals who this committee wants to meet with. We really don't know whether they willingly want to come or don't want to come because they've been ordered. The Prime Minister's letter to the clerk of the committee, in this case, said, “The purpose of this letter is to inform the Committee of my instruction to Mr. Soudas that he will not appear before the Committee.”
We have this strange situation here of the committee asking for certain witnesses, and we've added one to our original witness list because of what Mr. Togneri said before this committee. When that happened, there seemed to be a move to prevent these staffers from coming before committee. So we really don't know whether they willingly want to come. They're probably aware of the severe penalties for not coming under summons, but they're being ordered by their masters.
So where does that leave us, if you have a situation where the witnesses may want to come but are ordered not to come by their superiors? This is unique when it is the Prime Minister who is exercising the cover-up. It's a unique situation.