By The Canadian Press

Auto board scandal: Quebec says police will have easier time obtaining documents

Aug 28, 2025 | 8:42 AM

QUÉBEC — Quebec’s auto insurance board is going to make it easier for police to obtain documents in their investigation into hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns at the state-owned corporation, Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault said Thursday.

In a post on X, Guilbault said the auto board would “adjust exchange and collaboration mechanisms” so that anti-corruption police can more quickly receive the documents they seized.

“It’s essential that it fully co-operates with the police investigation. That is what Quebecers expect,” she wrote.

The auto board had allegedly refused to make documents available to police on grounds of attorney-client privilege, La Presse first reported Thursday.

That prompted a harsh reaction from Quebec Premier François Legault, who responded by publicly demanding it reverse course. “What we learned this morning is unacceptable,” the premier wrote earlier Thursday in a post on X. “Quebecers must be confident that the whole truth will come to light.”

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The corporation has been mired in controversy for months, after Quebec’s auditor general found that its new online platform SAAQclic was expected to cost $500 million more than expected. The scandal is now the subject of a public inquiry.

The platform’s launch in early 2023 was mired in problems, leading to major delays and long lineups at Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec branches, where Quebecers take road tests, register vehicles, and renew driver’s licences.

On Thursday, the auto board also confirmed that three of its directors have left in recent weeks.

Stéphanie Desforges left on Aug. 8, Richard Gagnon on July 9, and Louise Turgeon on July 21, auto board spokesperson Simon-Pierre Poulin shared in an email. The auto board “is going through a serious transition period, which may have led some members to re-evaluate their commitment. This type of turnover is common in any evolving organization,” Poulin wrote.

That brings the total number of board members to twelve now, he added, in line with provincial legislation.

On Thursday, Éric Ducharme, CEO of the auto board between 2023 and 2025, testified before the inquiry. He said that back in 2020, when he sat as secretary of Quebec’s Treasury Board, he wasn’t that concerned by what was happening with the SAAQclic platform.

He said that in October of 2020 then-CEO Nathalie Trembley had said the situation was under control.

“As for the cost overruns, like I said before, we were in a pandemic, there was no project that didn’t have problems,” said Ducharme, who was dismissed by the government as auto board CEO in July.

He said he was only informed of the total cost of the project once he took over the auto insurance board in April 2023. It was then he learned of an additional $45 million added to the contract, signed in the fall of 2022.

“I took a leap of faith on a lot of things,” Ducharme testified.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 28, 2025.

The Canadian Press