Quebec’s public auto insurer misled the provincial government and the public about soaring costs tied to its troubled online services platform, a public inquiry found, deepening a political and governance scandal around the SAAQclic project.
In a report released this week, Judge Denis Gallant concluded that officials at the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) made a “conscious effort” to conceal the full price tag of SAAQclic as costs ballooned. The inquiry was ordered by Premier François Legault in March 2025 after the auditor general warned that the platform was on track to cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion by 2027, about $500 million more than originally planned.
Gallant’s 586‑page report found that SAAQ officials knowingly provided incomplete or misleading information about total costs and technical problems, both internally and in communications with the government and public.
SAAQclic was intended to modernize services such as road test scheduling, vehicle registration and license renewals. Its rollout in February 2023 quickly turned into a public fiasco, with system outages and long lines at branches leaving thousands of Quebecers struggling to access basic services in the province’s mandatory auto insurance and licensing regime.
At the time, the Legault government acknowledged “major dysfunctions” at SAAQ, deployed emergency measures to clear backlogs and faced opposition calls for heads to roll. The scandal led to changes in SAAQ’s senior leadership and raised questions about oversight of large IT projects following earlier controversies in other parts of the Quebec public sector.
Gallant concluded that, even as these operational problems unfolded, the agency downplayed or hid the scale of budget overruns and technical setbacks. While the inquiry said there had been a systematic effort at the agency level to understate problems, it also noted that ministers and some public servants did at times receive reliable information about the issues, suggesting warning signs were present but not always acted on.
SAAQ is a central pillar of Quebec’s public insurance system, providing bodily injury coverage and administering licensing and registration. The SAAQclic debacle became a case study in the risks associated with large‑scale IT transformation in public insurance and transport, where service failures can quickly create consumer frustration and political fallout.
Gallant’s report included 26 recommendations, including a call for the government to establish a centralized entity specializing in major IT transformation projects. Such a body would oversee planning, governance and risk management across large digital initiatives, rather than leaving each agency or Crown corporation to manage its own billion‑dollar deployments.
The report also flagged weaknesses in project governance, vendor management and internal escalation at SAAQ, raising questions about how the board and senior management monitored SAAQclic and what role external consultants and system integrators played in cost and schedule overruns.
For other public insurers and government‑owned schemes, in Canada and abroad, the Quebec experience serves as a warning. Many are in the midst of, or planning, their own core‑system and digital front‑end replacements. Failures or cost blowouts risk damaging public confidence, straining budgets and triggering scrutiny of vendor contracts and internal controls.
Gallant’s findings were expected to fuel debate over the balance between in‑house and outsourced IT capabilities in public‑sector insurance, and the need for clearer accountability when projects spanned ministries, Crown corporations and private suppliers.
