Listen, it's been a tough year for many Canadian businesses, which are dealing with so much uncertainty at a time when a lot of their business models have been very much focused toward exporting to the U.S. That definitely was the business model of the steel sector, the aluminum sector, the auto sector, the forestry sector and many of the small and medium-sized businesses across the country. We still have the best deal on planet earth when it comes to access to the U.S., but the tariffs have been impacting a lot of people.
That being said, I think the reaction has been positive. That's because, first, we have a plan, and second, as our plan is being put into place, really it is working.
The best example I can give you is Tenaris, where I was last week with Premier Ford, who is the Ontario premier, as we all know. We were in Sault Ste. Marie, and we announced 200 new jobs and an investment of more than $70 million. That investment was possible because of the fact that we've approved many of the energy sector projects out in the west. Now Tenaris, which is a global company, has decided to invest more in its pipes and tubes processing, because it believes the demand is increasing in Canada and therefore there's a business case for it. What does that mean? It means it's good news for Algoma in Sault Ste. Marie, and it's also good news for Tenaris.
At the same time, the other example I could give you is definitely the defence sector. We started from having nearly no defence sector or a very small defence sector in Canada, and now we have an opportunity that is actually one of the biggest commercial opportunities in decades. We came up with this defence industrial strategy. Our goal is to create 125,000 jobs, as I said in my introductory remarks. I say that because, of all the industrial strategies that the government has ever announced, it is the most funded since the Second World War, because it's supported by a $500-billion budget.
What are we seeing concretely? We're seeing the aerospace sector really investing and trying to create new jobs. That was the example of MDS Coating in P.E.I. It was the biggest private investment and federal investment that we've seen in the last decades in P.E.I., and it's creating and maintaining 230 jobs in the aerospace sector.
We're seeing that in investments in the aerospace sector in Mirabel—at L3Harris and also Airbus. We're seeing that across the country, as we know that the manufacturing sector is affected by the tariffs.
My last point would be that we know that the auto sector is really impacted, so we want to make sure that certain plants can work on the defence front, to save jobs.