The computer breakdown affecting the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) was still not resolved on Wednesday. As a result, service centres must remain closed, except for practical driving tests. “It’s totally unacceptable, but it’s not SAAQClic, it’s Microsoft,” said Cybersecurity and the Digital Economy Minister Gilles Bélanger, at a news scrum in Parliament on Wednesday morning. The opposition called it a “fiasco,” in the wake of the SAAQ’s digital shift cost overrun scandal, which is even the subject of a public commission of enquiry. According to the SAAQ, the outage is linked to a set of servers supporting several support and mission services. The problems began at 3 p.m. on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday morning. The computer system failure has forced the SAAQ not to open its service centres and agents on Wednesday. The SAAQclic platform, although “functional,” is inaccessible. Practical tests can still take place, but people who had a different type of appointment on Wednesday “will be contacted and offered a new appointment in the coming days.” The SAAQ said that its teams are working with Microsoft to resolve these problems “as quickly as possible.” It pointed out that its customers’ data has not been affected. “It’s a fiasco! At what point does the Minister (of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault) become responsible?” said the interim leader of the Liberal opposition, Marc Tanguay, at a news briefing on Wednesday morning. “Quebecers have overpaid hundreds of millions for a project that probably doesn’t work, and we still don’t know who is responsible for the fiasco,” said Quebec Solidaire MNA Guillaume Cliche-Rivard. “This is very embarrassing for the government,” argued Parti Québécois (PQ) MNA Pascal Paradis at a news briefing. He criticized the “real impact” of this blackout on many citizens, adding that the PQ called for an enquiry into all the government’s IT contracts, but that the government had refused. This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 7, 2025.
