Absolutely. You've raised an extremely important question.
As you know, our government is working extremely closely with partners, including labour and health care unions, to seek solutions to improve retention and recruitment. That's particularly for personal support workers, home care workers and essential workers involved in providing care for some of the most vulnerable Canadians.
Tony, you know this; you're applauding.
Earlier this week, we announced we're going to be providing $198.6 billion in additional federal funding over the next 10 years for improvements in health care. This includes planned increases to the Canada health transfer and new funding of $48 billion over the next 10 years. This is a major new investment that we're making to ensure that we're providing that support to provinces and territories.
We also know, and you know this as well, that money is not the answer. We need to make sure there are real, tangible results for Canadians. We will sign agreements with the provinces and territories to make sure that Canadians have access to family doctors and nurse practitioners and that there is support for people who power our health care system, as well as to reduce backlogs. We need to help people have good mental health and substance support, and ensure that health information is available where they are. I want to take a moment to recognize all of our tremendous health care workers—nurses, doctors and personal support workers.
We are also infusing $1.7 billion over the next five years to the provinces and territories to implement a goal of reaching a minimum of a $25 an hour for personal support workers. They have been working extremely hard over the pandemic and are really the forefront of supporting seniors in long-term care homes and in home care.
There's a lot of work ahead of us, but I'm really looking forward to making sure we provide support to those who have been providing support to us from the very beginning.