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When John McMahon retired as director general of Vanier College on Aug. 30, he had just presided over a tumultuous period for Quebec’s English-language CEGEPs.

Bill 96 imposed an irreversible enrolment cap and triggered an onerous overhaul of the entire curriculum to include new French-language course requirements for anglophone, francophone and allophone students alike.

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“Every single program had to be modified over the last year in order to accommodate those French course program requirements,” McMahon told The Gazette last month. “It was difficult and challenging.”

Last spring, McMahon joined forces with the directors of four other English CEGEPs to amplify the pleas of Indigenous students and leaders who decried those new French prerequisites as an added barrier to education and demanded an exemption.

“It’s the fate and the success of our Indigenous students that is motivating the colleges to act,” McMahon said, speaking on behalf of his counterparts at Dawson, Champlain, John Abbott and Heritage colleges.

Though always courteous and diplomatic, McMahon has found himself defending the rights of English-speaking and Indigenous students in recent years and contesting — albeit constructively — some of the punitive policies stemming from Premier François Legault’s bid to strengthen French.

But soon he’ll be bringing his perspective inside the government. McMahon has been named the next assistant deputy minister at the Secretariat for Relations With English-Speaking Quebecers. His mandate begins Sept. 30.

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Created in 2017, the secretariat falls under the purview of Eric Girard — who in addition to being minister of finance is the minister responsible for relations with the English community — and is part of the Quebec government bureaucracy. Its role is to keep decision-makers in the public service and around the cabinet table abreast of the needs, interests and demographics of Quebec’s roughly 1.3 million anglophones. It’s policy oriented, not political. But the secretariat is nevertheless in a position to inform and influence the thinking of the likes of Legault or Girard. Well, if they choose to listen.

I sought an interview with McMahon last week to ask him how this leap came about and what he hopes to bring to this crucial role at a sensitive time for English-speaking Quebecers. After being referred to the Finance Ministry, I was told by the media relations handlers that he has not started his new position yet, that he is bringing himself up to speed on the secretariat’s files and that I could make a new request in a few weeks. So those questions will have to wait.

Still, there are high hopes that McMahon will be an English voice of reason within a government that has been at best clueless and at worst hostile toward anglophones since it took office six years ago. He will have the opportunity to bring his experience and expertise at the helm of an important English institution to bear on those imposing legislation and policy from the top down.

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It shouldn’t go unnoticed that McMahon was chosen for this position despite his dissenting views. Could it be an olive branch after the summer’s bad blood between the Legault government and anglophones over English health care? At this point, any attempt to mend fences or take the community’s concerns into account would be a welcome departure from business as usual.

McMahon is taking on this new gig at a fraught moment. It’s no secret that relations between English-speaking Quebecers and Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government have cratered and keep plumbing new depths.

The passage of Bill 96 reawakened old language tensions that had long been dormant. The law’s coercive measures have left anglophones feeling like second-class citizens. And the events that followed assurances that the rights of anglophones would be protected and access to English public services maintained have stoked deep mistrust.

Above and beyond Bill 96, there is widespread anger that the Legault government is bent on weakening English institutions. The attempt to abolish English school boards and turn them into service centres like their French counterparts — so far thwarted by the courts — is widely seen as undermining constitutionally guaranteed rights to manage and control education. The arbitrary 33 per cent tuition hike for out-of-province students has many fuming over the underhanded attack on Quebec’s English universities, especially McGill and Concordia. Even Bishop’s, which was supposed to be exempt, is experiencing collateral damage from the subliminal message that English speakers from the rest of Canada and other countries are no longer welcome in Quebec.

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Let’s not kid ourselves that McMahon joining the English secretariat is going to change all that. Still, having someone knowledgeable whispering in the ear of the powers that be is a positive development. Right?

Perhaps it could avoid more damaging fiascos, like the contradictory and unworkable directive for health care “in a language other than French.” The guidelines suggest anglophones could need an eligibility certificate for English education to access English health services. French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge claimed that’s simply not true (never mind what’s written in the 31-page document). This provoked much consternation over broken promises and confusion about compromised care. After a meeting with select anglophone groups, Roberge finally admitted the rules need to be revised.

What the bungled policy really showed is a complete lack of understanding about how eligibility certificates even work and who has them. The Education Ministry grants them only to schoolchildren. English-speaking seniors who graduated before Bill 101 came into effect in the 1970s don’t have the certificates and are apparently not eligible to apply for them. There are a host of other exceptions that make a mockery of this attempt to define so-called “historic anglos” and determine who has a right to health care in English.

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If there is any skepticism about McMahon’s appointment, it’s centred on the fact that the secretariat doesn’t have much clout. (The aforementioned health directive is a case in point, if the secretariat was ever consulted.)

The body was established by former premier Philippe Couillard after years of lobbying by the community, at a time when his Liberal government was being accused of taking anglophone support for granted. After the Quebec Liberals were defeated by Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec in 2018, there were doubts the secretariat would survive. But as an early gesture of goodwill, Legault decided to keep it and put himself in charge of relations with the English-speaking community. (Christopher Skeete was then his parliamentary secretary for anglophones, but didn’t have a seat at the cabinet table.)

The secretariat’s most visible work has been conducting, financing and disseminating research about English-speaking Quebecers. For instance, one recent study it funded by the Provincial Employment Roundtable found that anglophones face a higher unemployment rate and are more likely to live in poverty than francophone Quebecers, even as the English-speaking population has grown.

Another found that the proportion of anglophones in the Quebec civil service in 2019 was just one per cent — about the same as it was in 1970. So, make that one person more with McMahon coming aboard.

It will take a lot more than one inspired appointment or one wise person to rebuild frayed trust between English-speaking Quebecers and the Legault government. But it certainly can’t hurt.

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