SAAQclic website outage continues, forcing almost all services to close; CAQ blames Microsoft

The Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec’s (SAAQ) online portal remained down Wednesday morning, prompting all services to be cancelled — except for practical driving exams.

According to the SAAQ, the outage is linked to a server farm supporting several support and mission services. The problems began Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The IT system failure forced the SAAQ to close its service centres Wednesday. The SAAQclic platform, although “functional,” is inaccessible.

“The SAAQ wishes to reassure its customers: customer data is not affected,” Quebec’s auto insurance board wrote in a news release Wednesday.

Practical driving exams can still take place, but those who had other appointments scheduled for Wednesday “will be contacted to be offered a new appointment in the coming days.”

It was not clear when all services would be up and running again.

Government blames Microsoft

The Quebec government says it’s not to blame.

“This is totally unacceptable, but it’s not SAAQClic, it’s Microsoft,” said Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital Affairs Gilles Bélanger during a press briefing at the National Assembly Wednesday morning.

SAAQ explained that their teams and those at Microsoft are fully mobilized and working tirelessly to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

“We are aware of the inconvenience this situation may cause,” the SAAQ said.

The opposition called it a “fiasco.”

The province’s insurance board has been under intense scrutiny for its rollout of SAAQClic largely due to huge cost overruns – nearly $500 million more than was budgeted.

The digital transformation was supposed to provide a one-stop platform for renewing licences, scheduling driving tests and performing other tasks without needing an in-person meeting.

It ended up creating headaches for the provincial government in 2023 as frustrated citizens were stuck waiting in massive lineups at branches attempting to get services that should have been available online.

After an auditor’s report, Éric Caire was forced to resign as minister of cybersecurity and digital technology. The François Legault government established the public inquiry to shed light on what went wrong with the implementation of the software for the board.

–With files from The Canadian Press