SAAQclic fiasco: CAQ refuses to allow Committee on the National Assembly to investigate

After declaring its intention to shed light on the SAAQclic affair, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government on Tuesday prevented Committee on the National Assembly (CAN) from looking into the matter.

All CAQ MNAs voted against a Liberal motion proposing to give the CAN a mandate to investigate the SAAQ by summoning several of its executives and former executives.

The failed rollout of SAAQclic in 2023 led to long queues in front of branches and cost $500 million more than expected, for a total that will exceed $1.1 billion in 2025, according to the Auditor General.

In her report in February, the Auditor General concluded that the SAAQ had provided erroneous information to the elected members of the Commission de l’administration publique regarding the progress of the SAAQclic project.

Last week, the President of the National Assembly, Nathalie Roy, declared that this was, at face value, contempt of parliament. She asked parliamentarians to agree on what action to take.

However, on Tuesday, the CAQ government refused to allow the CAN to get involved; this body is the only one that could have decided whether the SAAQ had truly committed contempt of Parliament.

“Today, the CAQ are complicit in the deception. The CAQ don’t want to shed full light on the SAAQclic fiasco. They are protecting people who deceived us,” responded Liberal Party House Leader Monsef Derraji.

“What is the CAQ afraid of? Why don’t the CAQ want this commission of inquiry in Parliament so that we, as parliamentarians, can challenge and question these people who deceived us?”

In her decision, Roy had stated that it was entirely possible to conduct an investigation at the CAN in parallel with the public inquiry to be led by Denis Gallant, Derraji emphasized during a press briefing.

“Judge Gallant is not going to investigate the deceptions that took place inside the National Assembly. (…) The CAQ is complicit in the deception and they are afraid that the truth will be revealed by parliamentarians,” he insisted.

“It’s important to let the commission of enquiry do its work. It would not be appropriate to interfere (…) with an additional investigation by the CAN,” defended CAQ MNA Mathieu Lévesque.

“It would not make sense to have these two investigations at the same time, so there would be no added value,” he added.

However, the CAQ is once again demonstrating “its complete lack of respect for the National Assembly” by refusing to hold a parliamentary commission on the SAAQclic scandal, argued Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Guillaume Cliche-Rivard.

“They are doing everything to prevent us from asking questions” of the SAAQ’s executives and former executives, added Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon at a press briefing.

The Gallant Commission will begin its work shortly, despite repeated calls from the Liberals and the Parti Québécois (PQ) for Justice Gallant to recuse himself, given his ties to Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel.

Denis Gallant stated on April 1 that he had no intention of recusing himself. However, he committed to limiting his contact with witnesses he knows.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews