Thank you so much, Ms. Sidhu, for your question and your work. Thank you also to Marc Serré for his work on the issue of seniors. I recognize it's a passion of his as well.
Our government certainly recognizes that seniors are one of the fastest growing populations in our country. I come from New Brunswick, and when we look at our demographics, we see that New Brunswick has the oldest population in the country. With that come opportunities, but certainly some challenges as well.
In budget 2017, we were very pleased that we were able to invest $6 billion in the area of home care and palliative care services. In the area of mental health care, we invested an additional $5 billion. We certainly can't forget that many of our seniors need access to mental health services as well. The rate of mental health issues is about one in four in seniors.
Coming back to home care, we certainly recognize that seniors want to stay home as long as possible, so it's truly important to make sure that we don't only invest in bricks and mortar, buildings, and nursing homes. We also have to look at different service delivery models to perhaps provide seniors with the additional support they need to stay in their homes even longer. I'm very pleased that provinces and territories have agreed to a common statement of principle with respect to where that money would be invested. We've been able to successfully negotiate several bilateral agreements with provinces and territories on where those moneys will go. That's number one.
Also in budget 2018, I was pleased that $75 million was put aside for a pilot project to look at aging as well, and investments will be made in that area to look at different models, in order possibly to transfer those types of models to other provinces.
Furthermore, I want to add that the Public Health Agency of Canada has developed some guides and tools to allow cities to put in place age-friendly cities for their seniors. I'm from Moncton, New Brunswick. I'm very proud to say that we are an age-friendly city. They provide information to municipalities—towns and cities—to see what can they do to make their city more age friendly, whether it's by having buzzers on the door, making sure that sidewalks don't have big lips on them, or whatever the case may be. Those are some really neat initiatives of the Public Health Agency of Canada.
I also have to add that the Public Health Agency does some work as well in the area of data collection on elder abuse. Oftentimes, that's not an area we speak about a lot, but we certainly recognize that the rates are high. We need to have a better pictures of exactly what that looks like. Public Health is collecting data and finding ways to better address the issue of elder abuse.
Finally, as I've indicated, with respect to mental health, we want to make sure that services are in place, so targeted funding has been in place for that. We certainly can't forget the area of health research, so we look at funding that has been put forward through CIHR and other groups with respect to brain health initiatives and the rest of it. Significant investments have been made in that area, because we certainly recognize that our population is growing older. We have to make sure that we understand the challenges of today but also the challenges of tomorrow.