Madam Chair, I can answer Ms. Vecchio.
The original invitations to the Prime Minister and the other witnesses the committee had identified and wanted to hear from go back to a steering committee report. I don't have the precise dates off the top of my head, but back in February, the steering committee recommended a whole series of witnesses be invited. They included the Prime Minister, Minister Chagger, Minister Freeland, the Kielburger brothers, Mr. and Mrs. Perelmuter, and Bill Morneau. The recommendations for those witnesses had been ratified by the main committee also back in February. Invitations were sent out to all of those people.
When it comes to ministers of the Crown, such as Minister Chagger, Minister Freeland and the Prime Minister, we go through departmental contacts, parliamentary relations people who work with the minister's office, or in the case of the Prime Minister, with the Prime Minister's Office through PCO, to coordinate a response. Now, in the case of the Prime Minister, Minister Chagger and Minister Freeland, the invitations were made. As of today, I still do not have formal responses to those invitations. I did remind them, even as your motion was moved back at the end of February, that despite the fact that you had a new motion you were proposing to reinvite these people, the original invitations were still live, and that they can get back to me at any point with a formal response indicating yes or no.
Periodically, through the intervening three-plus months, I have checked in with each of those departments and the Privy Council Office to see where they were in responding to the invitations, but as I indicated, I have not received a formal response to any of the three invitations.
Some of the witnesses the committee had called for who weren't cabinet ministers or ministers of the Crown did get back to me definitively. Mr. Morneau got back to me definitively and declined. Mr. and Mrs. Perelmuter also got back to me definitively and declined, as I indicated to the committee some time ago. As for Marc and Craig Kielburger, I went back and forth with their representative as to a date, but they never settled on one. We never heard back in a formalized way regarding those two witnesses.