premise: Based upon this possibility and given that the government has wasted almost $1 billion on cancellation fees and will spend much more on lawsuits, will the government attempt to save the Canadian taxpayer a large sum of money by purchasing the same helicopter for both search and rescue and maritime operations - in other words, return to commonality?
hypothesis: The government has wasted more than $1.01 billion on cancellation fees.
reason: It says they wasted almost $1 billion, which presumably means less than $1 billion, not more than $1.01 billion. It's difficult because the system might not know what "almost" means in this context.