Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway for his excellent question.
One of the greatest tragedies of this pandemic is the lives lost in long-term care facilities. Like all Canadians, we are alarmed by the events that have occurred. In a country like ours, we should not need to call in soldiers to look after our seniors, as my colleague mentioned in his introduction.
The pandemic has highlighted the challenges that the long-term care sector has faced for many years. It has also highlighted the essential work done by personal support workers across the country who deserve greater recognition for the contributions they make to our society. While long-term care is regulated by the provincial and territorial governments, the federal government works with the provinces and territories to ensure the safety of residents and staff.
Under the new COVID-19 resilience stream of the investing in Canada program, federal infrastructure funding can be used to modernize long-term care homes, making them more resilient to ensure the safety of seniors.
The safe restart agreement has invested $740 million in infection prevention and control measures in long-term care homes and among other vulnerable populations.
We published guidelines for long-term care facilities to prevent and control COVID-19 outbreaks. We are investing billions of dollars in the procurement of PPE for health care workers, including the staff of long-term care facilities. We have provided $3 billion to the provinces and territories to increase the wages of low-income essential workers, such as staff at long-term care facilities.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed in more than 50 long-term care facilities in Quebec and Ontario, as my colleague mentioned.
In the Speech from the Throne, our government presented ambitious plans to work with other levels of government to improve how our society cares for seniors in long-term care.
Our government is committed to working with the provinces and territories to establish new national standards for long-term care. Our government will include in the Criminal Code penalties for those who neglect seniors under their care, putting them in harm's way. Our government will also examine other measures specifically for personal support workers.
Together with other measures, all this could help provide better protection for seniors and prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again.
In conclusion, seniors built our country and continue to make an important contribution to our economy, our families and our communities. Seniors need to know that they can always count on our government to be sensitive to their needs and work hard to meet them.