It took almost two years to arrive at the recommendation to toss Sen. Don Meredith from Canada’s beleaguered Red Chamber.

“(Meredith) is unfit to serve as a senator,” the Senate ethics committee ruled Tuesday after considering a report that found the 52-year-old senator and pastor had a sexual relationship with a teenage girl, offered her perks and promised her a committee job.

“The public needs to be able to believe that senators will protect the … weak, the voiceless and the vulnerable from the personal and parochial interests of the powerful,” the Senate committee stated in its report recommending his expulsion. Meredith had asked for a two-year suspension without pay.

An ongoing Star investigation shows that during the two years the investigation and deliberations took, Canadian taxpayers expended at least $600,000 in salary, office, meals, travel and other expenses on Meredith’s continuing job as a senator from Toronto.

The Senate will vote on the recommendation in the next two weeks and Meredith will be offered the opportunity to speak to the upper chamber. Meredith’s words to the ethics committee, in an in-camera meeting last month, were not divulged in its expulsion recommendation report. However, the committee found that the remorse he expressed behind closed doors was at odds with his behaviour since the incidents came to light. In short, the committee noted his “indifferent” attitude to the investigation and to his responsibilities as a senator.

It was June 2015 when the Star broke the story that Meredith had a sexual liason with a teenage girl beginning when she was 16 and continuing until just after her 18th birthday. She was a visiting student from overseas and met the senator at a church event in Ottawa. Meredith is a Pentecostal pastor. Dubbed “Ms. M” by the senate investigator, she recently told the Star she is looking forward now to “getting on” with her life.

In 2013, using a video link at first, he would masturbate while looking at the teenager’s partially unclothed body. While she was still 16, Meredith’s conduct progressed to a physical liaison in the girl’s apartment when Meredith partially removed his pants and touched her breasts and buttocks, and she then partially removed her top and touched the senator’s “private parts,” according to an investigative report that was completed two years after it began. They eventually had sexual intercourse, including once prior to her turning 18, the Senate ethics officer concluded.

He promised to help her with her career, get her a committee posting, maybe do some business with her family. Ultimately, he broke off the relationship, saying “God has spoken to me and am (sic) not happy with me … I should be leading you not making you.”

Within an hour of the Star’s story hitting the news in 2015, then prime minister Stephen Harper ejected Meredith — his own appointee in 2010 — from the Conservative caucus. Meredith kept his job as a senator, but no longer had a party affiliation. The Senate ethics officer began an investigation, but it moved slowly. During that time, Meredith’s previously close-to-exemplary attendance record in the Senate chamber lapsed and he took time off for health reasons. His previous minimal contributions to Senate debates dropped even further, the Star found.

There was no suspension of pay, and he continued with a $140,000 a year salary, plus enjoyed a healthy travel, hotel and meal allowance when he was in Ottawa or on the road. His office stayed open, but with a limited staff — all told the two-year expenditure added up to roughly $600,000, according to partially incomplete Senate records. A recent Star story revealed that in the years preceding the investigation, and while he was having his interactions with Ms. M, he expended taxpayer dollars, including stays at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and trips where he visited her in Ottawa and does not appear to have been performing Senate business.

Senators grappled with what to do during this time. Outspoken senators like former top Ottawa cop Vernon White denounced Meredith and made it clear he wanted him expelled. Others were not sure, or just kept quiet. The Senate had just endured several spending scandals and hard-working senators did not want another to further erode public confidence.

Meredith’s seven years as senator were, according to his office, focused on helping youth.

“He is a businessman, community advocate, and a devoted champion of youth empowerment,” reads the description on his official Senate website, and when he has spoken in the Senate over the years Meredith mentions the importance of youth, an age group he refers to as “100 per cent of our future.”

Why did the Senate investigation take so long?

Five days after the Star’s story broke, Sen. Leo Housakos made a request for an investigation. He wrote to ethics officer Lyse Ricard, and attached a copy of the Star’s investigative article.

“The progress of this inquiry was affected by a number of complicating factors,” investigator Ricard wrote in her March 2017 report. She immediately notified Meredith that she was conducting a preliminary review to decide whether an inquiry was warranted. Meredith had 15 days to respond to the allegations. That began a back and forth as to whether his alleged conduct was covered by the Senate rules. Meredith’s lawyer of the day contended that his obligations as a sitting member do not apply to “personal lives” of senators.

In August 2015, Ricard interviewed “Ms. M” under oath. She found her believable both times she conducted an interview. Ms. M told the same story to Ricard as she had to the Star. Meredith had courted her, touched her inappropriately in his office, and then they had used Skype and Viber to have sexual exchanges. Ms. M was falling in love with the then 48-year-old Meredith, a married father of two who was also a pastor in the Toronto area.

Sen. Don Meredith says he ?deeply? regrets his sexual relationship with a teenager and, in this video published on March 16, asks for forgiveness. Meredith says he is weighing his options after a scathing ethics report was released the previous week.

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The Ottawa police began an investigation and stopped shortly after. Ms. M was concerned her identity would be revealed in court if she pressed charges, so she did not. The Senate probe began anew, and Meredith was interviewed twice under oath. Ricard did not believe Meredith, according to her report.

Text and other messages were part of the investigation.

The probe by Ricard continued into 2016. When her report was sent to Meredith in early 2017, the senator asked for her to redact many of the intimate details of the relationship for privacy reasons. Ricard declined.

All in all, it was just under two months shy of two years. Ms. M (an advanced student) graduated from her studies during that time and is pursuing a career outside of Ottawa.

In several meetings, the standing committee on ethics and conflict of interest considered what to do with Don Meredith. In their report Tuesday recommending expulsion, they note their disgust with his behaviour:

“The Senate Ethics Officer found that on several occasions Senator Meredith engaged in sexual interactions with a teenage girl. That included masturbation over Skype, sexual touching, sexual innuendo and consensual sexual intercourse before and after the person had reached the age of 18. All of this occurred at a time when Senator Meredith was much older than Ms. M and was publicly portraying himself inside and outside the Senate as an advocate for youth.”

Read more: Teen alleges two-year affair with Senator Don Meredith

Don Meredith won’t address new report of sexual harassment: lawyer

Don Meredith’s relationship with teenager breached Senate rules, ethics office says

In the committee’s report, its authors said they considered the option of suspending Meredith without pay for two years. Ultimately, they decided to recommend expulsion because a senator’s job is a “public trust” and they decided Meredith had breached that trust. Had Meredith taken immediate action when the Star first brought the story to light — admitted his actions and tried to make amends — the committee mused that it might have considered suspension. “Senator Meredith had taken no steps towards restoration,” the committee wrote, and only admitted to unspecified “moral failings” when the investigative report was published in 2017.

When the Star contacted him in June 2015 to discuss the allegations it had just heard from Ms. M, Meredith said he was too busy to talk, and hung up.

As early as next week, depending on Senate scheduling, Meredith will be afforded the chance to address the stark words of the committee recommendation.

“That Senator Don Meredith be expelled from the Senate and that his seat be declared vacant.”

Kevin Donovan can be reached at kdonovan@thestar.ca or 416-312-3503

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