Former SAAQ board member defends Malenfant’s skills after digital shift fiasco

An office for the Societe de l'assurance automobile du Quebec (SAAQ), is seen in Montreal on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press) (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

A former member of the Quebec auto insurance board (SAAQ) board of directors remains convinced that Karl Malenfant was “the right person” to head the organization’s information technology (IT) department.

On Tuesday morning, Anne-Marie Croteau opened the third week of work for the Gallant commission, which is investigating the failures of the SAAQ’s (Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec) digital shift.

Croteau was chair of the SAAQ board’s IT committee when Malenfant was hired. She described him as the “ball carrier” of the project to modernize the state-owned corporation’s IT systems, including the creation of the SAAQclic platform.

Croteau was not involved in the selection process but recalled taking part in the last interview to confirm Malenfant’s appointment as vice president responsible for IT at the SAAQ in 2013.

Not knowing Malenfant before meeting him, she was nonetheless charmed by the man’s background. He had worked for Hydro-Québec, where he had led an IT project similar to the one the SAAQ wanted to undertake.

“We were convinced, and I still am, that we had the right person,” says the woman who is a professor specializing in IT management at Concordia University, as well as Dean of the John Molson School of Business.

“The fact that it was difficult at Hydro-Québec (to implement the IT project), we thought that it might be a way of learning from past experience, and it was a bit of a guarantee for us that he would look out for past mistakes if there were any,” she added.

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Croteau left the SAAQ board in 2019 after 10 years of involvement. At the time of her departure, she was convinced that the state-owned company’s digital shift was on the right track.

“I left with a great deal of pride. I was convinced that this was a winner (...) When this story came out in February 2023, I was appalled. I couldn’t understand what had happened other than the problem with government authentication,” she said.

The problems with the transactional platform in the winter of 2023 led to long lineups outside SAAQ branches, while in the preceding weeks, services had been limited in order to convert billions of pieces of data.

This story from the Canadian Press was first published in French on May 20, 2025.