‘Political interference’: Liberals accuse board members of protecting CAQ during SAAQclic transition

Liberal MNA Monsef Derraji during Question Period at the National Assembly, 20 February 2025. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Quebec City — The Official Opposition has slammed the SAAQ board of directors and its president over the SAAQclic scandal, which resulted in $500 million cost overruns for the digital shift at the Société d’assurance automobile du Québec.

Liberal MNA Monsef Derraji has examined the minutes of the SAAQ board of directors and concludes that there was “political interference” and that the members protected the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government.

In a damning report, Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc found that the board of directors had set aside the award of a $222 million supplement to SAP and LGS, which was instead broken down into several smaller contracts in the middle of an election campaign, because of a “high political and media risk.”

• SAAQclic fiasco: CAQ under fire as government opens investigations into plagued program

At its meeting on Sept. 14, 2022, during the election campaign, the board of directors discussed the digital switchover project at length, as well as the SAAQ’s contractual strategy for the project, but the redacted minutes were not available for reading.

The following day, Sept. 15, the board of directors met again to discuss the contractual strategy, and the chairman of the board, Konrad Sioui, took the time to remind the members of “certain obligations that apply to directors in the context of a general election.”

According to Derraji, this reminder is not insignificant. When asked about the nature of these “certain obligations,” whether they were, for example, a duty of reserve, Derraji said that he had never read anything of the kind concerning directors, even though he himself was a certified corporate director (CCD).

Derraji maintained that this sequence of decisions and this intervention by the chairman of the board constituted proof.

“There was a political choice to break up the contract so as not to embarrass the CAQ in the middle of an election campaign,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“They did everything they could to keep it from coming out during the election campaign,” he continued, pointing out that Sioui had been appointed by the CAQ.

The Minister of Transport at the time, François Bonnardel, never stopped claiming that he had been lied to and that the SAAQ had lied to MNAs.

“The board of directors knew, but Mr. Bonnardel didn’t? That’s absurd,” Derraji retorted.

He is demanding that the contents of all the minutes be cleared up as soon as possible, even though Premier François Legault has announced a public inquiry to shed light on SAAQclic.

“The Caquists have lost so much credibility that there’s no point in hiding information any more,” he pleaded.

Since its launch in 2017, the SAAQ’s CASA program, its digital shift, has cost $500 million more than expected, for a total that will exceed $1.1 billion by 2025.

The CAQ government has never stopped repeating that it knew nothing about it and that everything had been hidden from it, but the current Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, the Minister for Cybersecurity and the Digital Economy, Éric Caire, and even the premier’s department itself had been informed of the project’s updates.

Caire was forced to resign on Feb. 27.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 11, 2025.

Patrice Bergeron, The Canadian Press