For that, we said we would like to have these witnesses back for a meeting in May, and the clerk duly invited them. All of them declined to appear before the committee. When I tabled the motion to summons them and put them on notice, miraculously Mr. Noseworthy said, “Okay, I guess I will come. As an official, I won't get summonsed.” I think that's a dark comment on parliamentary respect, that these former ministers and chiefs of staff declined to appear.
I will read the motion that I have on notice:
That the committee summon the following witnesses to speak on matters related to allegations of conflicts of interest at Sustainable Development and Technology Canada:
(a) Veena Bhullar, former liaison between ISED and SDTC,
(b) Andrew Noseworthy, assistant deputy minister on clean technologies,
(c) Navdeep Bains, former Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and
(d) Gianluca Cairo, former chief of staff to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry;
and that the witnesses be asked to appear at a time determined by the chair but no later than June 7, 2024.
The reason is that we gave them more than a month to appear. Mr. Noseworthy has agreed to appear, so we don't need to summons him, but we do need to summons the others who are refusing to appear.
I would hope that the committee will deal with this expeditiously and agree with me that it is a slap in the face to the parliamentary process that the other three, (a), (c) and (d), on that motion are refusing to appear and must be summonsed to appear on this important matter.
This does not add any meetings to our schedule. It was already scheduled as part of our approved steering committee report, which was approved by this committee.
Mr. Chair, I will leave it there, and there might be a few questions or comments, but hopefully we can move on. It would be (a), (c) and (d) who would be summonsed, not Mr. Noseworthy.