Car insurance claims in Quebec

Quebec splits a motor accident in two, and the split is sharper than in any other Canadian province. Bodily injury belongs entirely to a public insurer: compensation under Title II of the Automobile Insurance Act «is granted by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec regardless of who is at fault» (art. 5), and art. 83.57 then closes the courthouse door — compensation «stands in lieu of all rights and remedies by reason of bodily injury and no action in that respect shall be admitted before any court of justice». There is no verbal threshold to cross and no tort election to make, which is what distinguishes Quebec from Ontario and from Saskatchewan. Every person injured in an accident is a victim (art. 6); a Quebec resident is covered whether the crash happened in Quebec or outside it (art. 7), while a non-resident injured in Quebec is compensated only to the extent they were not responsible (art. 9).

Property damage stayed in the ordinary law, and it is handled twice over. The owner of an automobile «is liable for the property damage caused by such automobile» (art. 108), with the driver solidarily liable unless the accident is shown to be the victim’s fault, a third person’s, or superior force (art. 109); where owners cannot exonerate themselves and unequal fault is not proved, equal sharing is presumed (art. 113). But the claim is not usually brought that way. Article 116 provides that, so far as the direct compensation agreement of art. 173 applies, the owner’s recourse may be exercised only against the insurer with which the owner contracted automobile liability insurance — you claim from your own insurer, under a fault-sharing scale the Groupement des assureurs automobiles is required to establish. The compulsory policy insures exactly this: art. 84 requires a liability contract covering property damage, and art. 87 fixes the minimum compulsory amount at fifty thousand dollars.

Three clocks matter, and they belong to different instruments. Entitlement to SAAQ compensation «is prescribed by three years from the accident or the time the injury appears» (art. 11), and a claim to the Société interrupts the Civil Code prescription until a final decision. The Civil Code gives three years for the property-damage action and for an action on the policy (art. 2925), running from the day the injury first appears where it appears late (art. 2926). And the insurer «is bound to pay the indemnity within 60 days after receiving the notice of loss or, if the insurer requested them, the relevant information and vouchers» (art. 2473) — a Civil Code obligation, not a regulator’s service standard. Inside the SAAQ’s own process, a claimant has sixty days to ask for a review of a decision and sixty days to contest it before the Administrative Tribunal of Québec (arts. 83.45, 83.49), and if the Société has not disposed of a review within ninety days the claimant may go to the Tribunal regardless (art. 83.49).

Two practical points. Where the driver or owner cannot be identified, the claim goes to the Société, not to a coverage on your own policy: the accident must have been reported to police within forty-eight hours, a detailed notice must reach the Société within sixty days of the accident, no claim survives repairs made before the Société’s expert has appraised the damage, and the Société must then satisfy the claim within sixty days, up to fifty thousand dollars for bodily injury and ten thousand for property damage (arts. 143, 148). At the scene, the Highway Safety Code requires the driver to stay or return immediately and give necessary assistance (art. 168), to call a peace officer whenever anyone has been injured (art. 169), and to hand over name, address, licence number, the registered owner’s details and the insurance attestation (art. 170); where property or an animal over twenty-five kilograms was struck and the owner cannot be reached, the nearest police station must be contacted without delay (art. 171). No dollar reporting threshold appears in those articles. Insurers are supervised by the Autorité des marchés financiers. Whether diminished value is recoverable in Quebec has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here.