Taking Back Control of Our Public IT Projects

There is a systemic problem in the management of public IT projects in Canada and Quebec. This is not a secret. It is not an opinion. It is a finding documented by auditors general, public inquiries, and decades of data.

The numbers are hard to ignore. And yet, the same mistakes repeat themselves, project after project, government after government. At V.I.A. Solutions, we believe it is time to stop documenting the damage and start building concrete solutions.

ArriveCAN: $80,000 That Became $59.5 Million

In February 2024, Canada's Auditor General Karen Hogan released a devastating report on the ArriveCAN application. The initial estimate for the app was $80,000. The final cost: approximately $59.5 million, 744 times the original budget.

But the most troubling aspect is not the amount itself. It is that the government was unable to determine the true cost of the project due to poor record-keeping. The Auditor General was categorical:

“This is probably some of the worst financial record keeping that I've seen.”

She also emphasized in a CBC Radio interview that “an emergency is not an excuse to ignore the most basic requirements of maintaining complete and accurate records.”

According to CBC News, the Auditor General's report revealed that GC Strategies, a two-person firm, was awarded contracts totalling $19.1 million. According to that same report, this firm had helped write the requirements that it subsequently bid on.

SAAQclic: Half a Billion in Overruns

The SAAQclic project by Quebec's automobile insurance agency (SAAQ) was intended to modernize the agency's IT systems. Initial budget: $638 million over 10 years. According to the February 2025 report by Quebec's Auditor General (VGQ), the total cost will reach “at minimum” $1.1 billion, an overrun of approximately $462 million, or 72% above the 2017 projections.

The VGQ concluded that the project was “certainly not a success.” The Gallant Commission subsequently concluded that SAAQ management had “lied to parliamentarians, ministers, and their ministerial staff” for years about the real state of the project.

The February 2023 launch was catastrophic: the system could not process transactions, erroneous information was sent to courts, vehicles were wrongly listed as stolen, and police were unable to access the system. Quebec's anti-corruption unit (UPAC) raided SAAQ headquarters.

According to the February 2025 report by Quebec's Auditor General, the primary vendor had privileged access before the bidding process even began, an unfair advantage that compromised the integrity of the entire procurement.

Phoenix: $4.8 Billion and Unpaid Public Servants

According to CBC News, the federal government's Phoenix pay system was estimated at $309 million. As of 2025, cumulative costs have reached approximately $4.8 billion. As an example, 483,130 employees received overpayments alone, not counting those who were underpaid or not paid at all for months.

This Is Not Anecdotal: It Is Structural

The Large Government of Canada IT Projects tracker catalogues 495 federal IT projects (2022 data). Among them: the Canada Revenue Agency's Quantum 2.0 project experienced a 407% cost increase (from $14.2M to $71.9M), and the Offender Management System was 8.62 years behind schedule.

The Root Causes

Analyzing these failures, recurring patterns emerge:

• Incentive alignment challenges: in governance structures where the same teams take on multiple roles, advisory, development, and validation, objective feedback mechanisms are missing. ArriveCAN and SAAQclic illustrate the risks of these governance models.
• Absence of independent real-time oversight: without an external source of information to complement progress reports produced by delivery teams, deviations accumulate silently before being detected.
• Deficient change management: amendments are added without rigorous assessment of their cumulative impact. The original scope becomes unrecognizable.
• Non-existent traceability: when the Auditor General investigates, records are incomplete, decisions are undocumented, and accountability is diluted.

V.I.A.'s Response: Concrete Solutions

At V.I.A. Solutions, we do not settle for diagnosing the problem. We build solutions.

Our independent advisory and technical validation services are designed to directly address each of these structural failures:

• Strategic Scoping: before an RFP is even drafted, we help define clear, measurable needs aligned with operational reality, to prevent drift from the start.
• Technical Contract Diagnosis: before a contract is signed, we validate that requirements are measurable, verifiable, and aligned with real needs. This is the first line of defense against cost overruns.
• Technical Realignment (Search & Rescue): when a project drifts, we provide an independent diagnosis of the gaps and prescribe the corrective actions needed to get the project back on track.
• AI Strategy & Governance: we guide organizations through AI adoption, use case evaluation, responsible governance, and an implementation plan adapted to their reality.

It Is Time to Act

The billions wasted on public IT projects are not inevitable. These are public funds, taxpayer money, that could be invested in healthcare, education, or infrastructure.

Society deserves better. Citizens deserve to know that every dollar invested in digital transformation corresponds to a concrete and verifiable result.

At V.I.A. Solutions, that is exactly what we want to make possible. Not with words. With tools, processes, and a rigor that leaves no room for gray areas.

It is time to take back control.