Fiasco Saaqclic: Karl Malenfant will have to testify on camera on Tuesday, slice the commissioner

The great manager of the digital transition from the Quebec Automobile Insurance Company (SAAQ), Karl Malenfant, will indeed have to present himself for a camera interrogation next Tuesday, decided Commissioner Denis Gallant.

Mr. Malenfant had asked the commissioner on Thursday who oversees the commission of public inquiry on the SAAQCLIC fiasco to break this summons to appear, a request to which Denis Gallant refused to reach Friday.

Karl Malenfant claims that a preliminary meeting […] violates his freedom of expression since he cannot speak in publicwrites judge Gallant, sweeping away from the back of the hand the argument presented by the old framework of the Saaq.

However, not only is he certainly testifying in public hearing, but, through the traditional media, the applicant and his lawyer are freely expressedhe adds in his 19-page decision published late Friday at the end of the day.

Joined by phone, Mr. Malenfant’s lawyer, Me Jean-François Bertrand, has a long time to say about the reasoning behind the Commissioner’s decision, A decision that does not enlighten us, but that worries us morehe said.

He is now thinking of addressing the Quebec Superior Court to overthrow the Commissioner’s decision.

Questioned on this subject, the commission spokesperson, Me Joanne Marceau, did not wish to comment more, believing that The decision talks about itself.

A matter of time

Me Bertrand does not give up: the Gallant Commission wishes to meet Karl Malenfant in private in order to organize its public testimony in order to satisfy its narrative. A way, according to the lawyer, to gag son client.

Why don’t we let him tell the whole story?

A reasoning convolutedwrites Commissioner Gallant in his decision on Friday.

Note that Karl Malenfant has already met the commission investigators at the beginning of May during an interview with closed microphones which lasted approximately three hours.

However, the Commission sent him a new assignment to appear in camera for August 5, but this time, in the presence of Commissioner Gallant.

Commissioner Gallant writes in his decision on Friday that these meetings are necessary For the sake of efficiency of our hearings and healthy planning of public audience.

Recall that the commissioner has until December 15 to make his final report, after Quebec granted him an extension of a few months in June.

An argument that does not move Me Jean-François Bertrand.

If we are too in a hurry, we will not have it, the truthhe said. As an example, he quotes the Charbonneau commission on the granting of contracts in the construction industry, which will have lasted four years.

What the commissioner tells us is: “I want to go fast to finish that, but you, the Quebecers, you will not have access to all the information.”

The name of Mr. Malenfant is omnipresent in the testimonies heard so far to the Commission. It was he who directed the major project to modernize digital systems of the Saaqbaptized CASAwhich, among other things, led to the SAAQCLIC platform, whose failures and cost -effects have been largely documented.

Mr. Malenfant disputes the version of the facts of certain witnesses, which show it as one of the managers of these slippages.

According to Me Bertrand, his client was only executor in all this story. The blame, according to him, is on the side of the board of directors of the SaaqWho made the decisions.