Respectfully, I don't think we can confuse not responding with a refusal to appear before the committee. I want to make the point that I made before. Those are two very different things. An email can get lost in an inbox or someone can be unavailable. I think there could be a very reasonable explanation, other than what Mr. Perkins is assuming, which is the most negative interpretation that we could give.
Being a little bit more charitable in our interpretation, she has now responded and said she's available on the 12th, so perhaps the word “summons” is not necessary.
Chair, I want to go back to the point that I made earlier, which is that Ms. Verschuren shouldn't have been invited at all until our committee deliberated on whether that witness was necessary. How did she get invited twice when the motion itself, the letter of that motion and the agreement that this committee made, was not to invite witnesses but to use their testimony and then deliberate on whether those witnesses needed to be reinvited to this committee?