That was one of the things I was going to bring up. At the end of the day, the witness list and everything has to be brought back to the full committee. If John is saying that we'd have to get together in August, then so be it, but I'll go back to my argument about having point 1 in here. The way it's written with the four-hour blocks, it's very prescriptive.
Again, the analysts put forward this very good legislative summary. Depending on the interest and the availability, perhaps we could give them a bit of leeway to come up with a work plan for us over that period of time. They've heard the topics, and I think we've heard just around the table here more than eight topics that maybe could be congealed into even a smaller number of topics—or themes, as the chair brought up, which I think is a good idea.
Point 1 in the motion takes away some of the flexibility. That's all I'm thinking here. As this gets out, we may want to spend a bit of extra time here or there, or there may be other topics that we weren't thinking of.
I do want to go back to the dates. I sincerely thank John for putting them forward. I don't know how this date of Thursday, September 14, came through the channels of the government, but I'm worried about having the ministers on the 15th. We know that this place is filled with rumours, and the rumours are out there now. If the government does decide to prorogue, one of the dates they suggested was the 15th, which means that the ministers wouldn't be here.
I would like to have the ministers here sooner than later, particularly the Minister of Justice, if we can only get one. I don't know what the cabinet members' schedules will be like, but this is a priority of the government. I think if the government wants to get this through, they know the cabinet schedule way in advance, and I know that cabinets can sometimes be a bit flexible too. It's important to have at least the Minister of Justice here before that date of September 14, because none of us here really knows what will happen on the 15th.