Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I'm getting all the tough questions from the woman who is supposed to give me the easy ones. I thought this would be the question coming from Mr. Thibault when we started, because he's been after me on this one a few times.
The truth is it's a very complicated equation. As you well know, we are dedicated to a resolution to it, in all fairness, Mr. Chair. As you well know, this is an issue that's been around for fifty-some years, going back to the early days of CF Base Gagetown in New Brunswick, the spraying of herbicides and defoliants over the course of some of those years. Some of them are registered, some of them are not. But it's one where we're not going to be like successive governments, and I'm not saying that in a pejorative way either, because not all governments were Liberal and not all governments were Conservative, but the fact is that none of those governments in that fifty-some-year period dealt with it. Why? Because it's complicated and it's a difficult issue, so governments sometimes prefer to walk away from difficult issues. It's one we're not going to walk away from.
As you well know, our mandate is to deliver the compensation package to the veterans and civilians who were exposed. DND's role in this, the Department of National Defence, is that they're going out on a fact-finding mission, if you will. There are a number of tests that are ongoing, and the results of some of those tests have already come in. They've been delivered to us, if you will, for examination, and to the Department of National Defence. So we're working very cooperatively with National Defence on this file.
What I say, and have consistently said, is that a resolution to this is going to be knowledge-based, because previous governments have had a terrible habit of announcing programs and compensation plans and what not without thinking it through to its logical conclusion, if you will. Again, I'm not pointing fingers at individual governments. But we don't want the proceeds of a compensation plan to flow to lawyers and get tied up in a lot of legalese and roadblocks, which sometimes occur at all government levels when you get into a plan that has not been well thought out and knowledge-based.
By knowledge-based, I mean we're going to make sure that we have the scientific and medical evidence on which to build our case and build the plan, and we're going to make sure that we do the research necessary in terms of the human involvement, in terms of tracking the soldiers and the civilians on the base. It's very complicated, and I don't think I have to state any more than that, because all of you, I think is what I'm trying to say, understand just exactly how complex it is.
Veterans Affairs has a number of compensation models we're looking at, and I still believe we'll be in a position to present probably two cabinet compensation models sometime late in the fall, early new year, providing something doesn't unexpectedly happen at the base. There have been a few surprises in terms of some of the medical results or scientific results coming in, but for the most part we're pretty comfortable.
I have some of my experts with me from the department. This is where Veterans Affairs is really good in delivery of these types of programs. So we can tweak them or fine-tune them as we go along, but basically we believe that we can take a proposal to cabinet sometime later this fall or in the new year. So we're well on the way.
If any of the members want to get into the specifics on Agent Orange and the U.S. model and our model, and so on, I'll do that, because it gets complicated when you're talking and comparing a pension plan versus a compensation plan. Given the time, I'm more than pleased to get into some of the nitty-gritty detail or the differences in some of those plans, if you will.