SAAQclic: François Bonnardel testifies that he didn’t have the complete financial picture

CAQ Minister François Bonnardel insisted that he had incomplete and inaccurate information about the costs of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) IT project.

Bonnardel, who served as Minister of Transportation from 2018 to 2022, delivered his expected version of the facts surrounding the SAAQclic fiasco on Thursday afternoon.

“My bulls**t meter is pretty high. And I realize today that a few people have shamefully managed to provide inadequate information so that we are unable to see the real picture of the situation,” he said at the end of his testimony.

He criticized the state-owned corporation for not providing him with an accurate financial picture of the digital shift when he took office as minister in November 2018.

He said he started with “an erroneous document in December 2020” on the status of the project, which remained unchanged until the end of his term.

“At that time, we should have had a document that mentioned the $638 million. That’s the real figure that the auditor general estimated to be assessed from 2017,” he said in French. “I only worked with $458 million and I should have had $638 million because in the $638 million, there was a development phase, there was an operating phase. I don’t have that. We work with what we have, but what I learned thanks to you is that the documents of my predecessor or the information that the SAAQ gave to the former government was different from what was given to me.”

The SAAQ’s IT project, called CASA, is expected to cost at least $1.1 billion, $500 million more than initially planned, according to the Auditor General of Quebec in her February report.

Bonnardel’s testimony follows the appearance this week of political staffers who formed his staff when he was minister. Bonnardel is now the Minister of Public Security.

In recent days, former political advisors and chiefs of staff have been questioned about their knowledge and actions regarding the SAAQ’s technological modernization.

On Monday, former Liberal Ministers of Transport, Laurent Lessard and André Fortin, also gave their version of events to the public inquiry commission.

The current minister of the portfolio, Geneviève Guilbault, is also expected to be heard by the end of the week.

It should be noted that the SAAQ’s IT project, called CASA (Carrefour des services d’affaires), is expected to cost at least $1.1 billion, $500 million more than expected, according to the Auditor General of Quebec.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews