The SAAQclic system was supposed to simplify citizens’ lives. More than one billion dollars were committed.
On the ground, screens freeze, appointments disappear, employees go back to paper, and people take time off again to handle procedures that were supposed to take a few minutes.
In a so-called emerging country, or if the same thing were happening in Africa, a billion dollars moving between the same firms, the same subcontractors, the same experts, without anyone losing their job or their eligibility, we would put on our Western moralizing hat and say the word without hesitation: corruption.
But because it is happening here, we talk instead about IT problems, fixes, and commissions of inquiry.
The only act that would show a political will to get out of this mess is simple: take the biggest failed digital projects of the last ten years, follow the money, look at whether firms reappear, whether subcontractors show up regularly, whether executives move from one project to another, whether links exist between teams, companies, and public contracting authorities.
In short: not an audit of the code, an audit of the money.
You follow the contracts, the subcontracts, the subsidiaries, the executives, the networks, and you simply look at who made money, how many times, on which projects, and with whom. You would quickly see whether the same actors return, the same subsidiaries, the same executives, sometimes the same political networks.
And if such an audit revealed corruption or breach of trust, Canadian and Quebec law already allows personal liability to be engaged.
The Criminal Code directly targets individuals: fraud, breach of trust, corruption. A corporate executive, a public servant, or an elected official can be prosecuted personally. Fines, bans, prison: the tools already exist.
Personal liability is therefore not a radical idea. What is missing is the will to use it.
So the question is simple.
If a billion dollars moves and no one trembles, is it really a technical failure… or a system working exactly as intended?
