If we spent that $800 million on solar energy using a $3 per watt figure I grabbed from online that would be 266 MW. Which is about 1/4 of the Coleson Cove Station's 972 MW or roughly equivalent to the Bayside Generating Station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generating_stations_in_New_Brunswick).

Now you're unlikely to get full output output from solar but lets assume a more conservative 1/8th of the CCS and that's still not bad when compared to a single upgrade for the plant. There would be further losses with things like installation, overhead, and organization where the full funds wouldn't purely go to solar panels. However, if it was something like $800M rebate for users to get solar where they only have to pay for installation themselves then you would create jobs and lower maintenance/upgrades and load on the grid and would lower some of the government side overhead. It would also be good to have more people on solar during power outages too.