Mr. Speaker, as my colleague said, there is no health without mental health. That is why access to mental health and substance use supports, including at the community level, is a fundamental piece of work that we want to undertake with the provinces and territories.
I think we all know our health system is facing major challenges, made worse by the pandemic. As we work with the provinces to fix it, we have to make sure that mental health and substance use care is integrated transparently as an integral and equal part of our universal health care system.
I believe the proposal we put forward to the premiers yesterday provides both the resources and the mechanism to get us there.
We are keeping our commitment to transfer billions of dollars to the provinces and territories in the coming years to support mental health, but we are doing so by increasing the Canada health transfer, which includes mental health, and by providing $25 billion over 10 years under long-term integrated bilateral agreements.
At the working meeting with the provincial premiers, the federal government announced that it will increase health funding to the provinces and territories by $196.1 billion over 10 years, including $46.2 billion in new funding.
This funding includes an immediate, unconditional $2 billion Canada health transfer top-up to address immediate pressures on the health care system. A 5% CHT guarantee for the next five years will be provided through annual top-up payments as required. This measure is projected to provide an additional $17.3 billion over 10 years in new support.
The last top-up payment will be rolled into the CHT base at the end of the five years to ensure a permanent funding increase, providing certainty and sustainability to provinces and territories. With this guarantee, the CHT is projected to grow by 33% over the next five years, and 61% over the next 10 years.
We are also providing $25 billion over 10 years to advance shared health priorities through tailored bilateral agreements that will support the needs of people in each province and territory in four areas of shared priority: family health services, health workers and backlogs, mental health and substance use, and a modernized health system.
We believe these bilateral agreements are the most effective way to incorporate shared priorities into this funding, to reflect the unique needs of each province and territory, and to support mental health as part of an integrated patient-centred approach. The goal of this collaborative work and these bilateral agreements is to provide Canadians with a multidisciplinary system of care.
This approach integrates mental health into all the shared priorities, from improving access to mental health through primary care, to improving data and sharing information on health between the professionals that are consulted, or the approach to address the labour shortage in the health and mental health care sectors and to provide better mental health support to prevent burnout.
These are results that will improve access to the supports Canadians need when they need it.