The gas plants are old news.  The perspective is that $1 billion is small potatoes in a province that pays that much to service it's debt, and has the largest sub-sovereign debt in the word (about $320 billion).  The debt servicing amount could go a long way to lower hydro rates, improve education, build more infrastructure, etc.  Imagine what that money could do for medical care.

Let's move on and look at the bigger picture of debt  that we can never/never pay off, but will keep servicing at larger and larger amounts.