Testifying at the Gallant commission, Quebec Premier François Legault said he was unaware of any cost overrun issues for the province’s automobile insurance board’s digital transition until an auditor general report earlier this year revealed the project was $500 million over budget.
“The first time I heard of cost overruns was February 2025,” he said on Tuesday.
The premier said he first heard of CASA — the project which was meant to modernize different IT systems and improve the delivery of online services through the SAAQclic platform — when lines of people waiting for their driver’s licences snaked around Société de l’assurance de l’automobile du Québec (SAAQ) service points in winter 2023.
Legault was formally called to testify last week. A number of his cabinet ministers, past and present, have already shared their versions of the facts demonstrating that some knew about the budgetary issues facing the board, known as the SAAQ, before the auditor general revealed them to the public.
Since April, the commission has been leading the public inquiry into the SAAQ’s CASA project. It was launched despite improper testing, infamously causing headaches for its users, and with a $500 million cost overrun, said the auditor general in her scathing report in February.
The commission seeks to find out who within the SAAQ and Coalition Avenir Québec government knew what at different stages of the CASA project’s development.
Legault said it was the responsibility of Dominique Savoie, the secretary general of the executive council, to inform him. Savoie was in that role from December 2023 to January 2025. She is currently the chair of the SAAQ board of directors.
Insisting that he was still unaware of the digital transition project’s additional costs, Legault said that seeing the “unacceptable” aftermath of the SAAQclic launch led him to fire then SAAQ director general Denis Marsolais in April 2023.
“The SAAQ offices were closed for a number of weeks.They were reopened without adding staff,” he said. “Obviously, there was poor planning.”
Legault acknowledged that his ministers, specifically the transport ministers, “could have asked more questions” after learning the overall project would cost hundreds of millions more than expected.
“It was never clear that there was a cost overrun of $500 million,” he said before saying he would have asked more questions if he had been presented with documents from the SAAQ.
“Should I have known? I think so. Someone should have informed me and that wasn’t done,” Legault said.
But he said the main issue comes from the heads of the SAAQ, which he said “poorly anticipated cost overruns and deadlines” outlined in the contract with suppliers.
SAAQclic fiasco: What did the premier know?
He seemingly defended Public Security Minister François Bonnardel — who was transport minister in 2023 — and current Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault, saying they had only received “part of the information” concerning further costs.
“The leaders of the SAAQ had a responsibility to communicate the information and the right information,” Legault said, adding that a lack of accountability on the part of the SAAQ’s leaders prompted him last week to say that he didn’t like “what he was hearing” from Gallant commission testimonies.
“Quebecers are expecting consequences” for those responsible for the project’s excessive costs, he said.
Legault also faulted the previous Quebec Liberal government for signing what he called a “poorly negotiated” contract in 2017 and said determining how it arrived at the agreement was “far more important,” in his opinion, than the overruns that took place under his government.
The commission heard testimonies from former cybersecurity minister Éric Caire — who stepped down shortly after the auditor general published her report — as well as Bonnardel and Guilbault.
Health Minister Christian Dubé and Treasury Board President Sonia Lebel, also took the stand last week. Dubé held Lebel’s current role from 2018 to 2020.
Among other things, the inquiry has shown, through an email exchange, that Caire knew the CASA project had gone over budget as early as 2021, though he said he wasn’t aware of the scope of the overrun at that time.
For her part, Guilbault, who picked up the transport file in October 2022, told the commission that the former director general of the SAAQ, Denis Marsolais, had misled her as to the progress of the project, insinuating that it was respecting the budget. She insisted she learned about the issues plaguing the SAAQ at the same time as everybody else in February but her testimony revealed that she was made aware of overruns in 2023.
She said that by that point, the additional costs were necessary to keep the project — which had already launched — afloat.
The question at hand today is whether critical information had reached the premier’s office.
Earlier testimony from Véronik Aubry, who was Bonnardel’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2021, suggested that she had shared news of the delays within CASA with a political adviser of Legault’s in 2020. She had also warned of a potentially costly legal dispute between the SAAQ and one of its contractors.
The commission will also hear from Martin Koskinen, the premier’s chief of staff, and Yves Ouellet, former secretary general and clerk of the Ministry of the Executive Council, later today.
