I started my career at Ford Motor Company of Canada.
I'm very familiar with the automotive sector. Under our government, I'm very proud to say that we've secured 2.6 billion dollars' worth of automotive mandates, the big one being the Ford investment. The key feature is that, not only are we getting mandates to build cars, but we're getting mandates to build the cars of tomorrow. With the investment in autonomous and connected vehicles, there's $500 million that Ford invested.
It's really about securing that footprint in Canada. You talked about the 500,000 jobs, both direct and indirect. It's also the focus on technology. In order to do that, we launched a global skills strategy program to allow car companies, and other sectors as well, to have access to top Canadian talent and global talent, so they maintain their R and D centres here in Canada. That's where a lot of these connected autonomous vehicle initiatives are taking place.
The reality is that people don't talk about horsepower anymore when they talk about vehicles. They talk about software power. We want to be a leader in this area. We'll continue to work with car companies to get additional mandates going forward.