OTTAWA—Don Meredith is officially a “former senator,” and his lawyer says it’s time to lay off the disgraced parliamentarian, who resigned from the red chamber this week to avoid an historic expulsion vote over his sexual affair with a teenage girl.

Questions linger in the wake of his departure — should he get his pension and what happens to the outstanding ethics investigations into his behaviour? — but Meredith’s lawyer, Bill Trudell, told the Star on Wednesday that his client has been punished enough.

“He made mistakes. It’s cost him significantly,” Trudell said.

“At some point of time we have to stop calling for blood and move on.”

Meredith’s resignation became official Wednesday afternoon when the Senate speaker announced that the chamber had received notice from the Governor General that the “former senator” would step down.

Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, chair of the ethics committee that recommended expelling Meredith, said afterward that she planned to call a meeting of the five-member group to determine what to do about the unfinished investigations into the former senator’s behaviour.

The Senate’s ethics code says that the investigations are suspended unless the committee decides they should go on.

One of those investigations involves allegations of workplace harassment that are separate from his affair with the teenage girl. A second one relates to a 2015 story in the Ottawa Citizen, which detailed how Meredith brought an employee from a company he owns on an official Senate trip.

“I know there are two (investigations) that are in the public domain. We will ascertain exactly what is left to deal with… and then we’ll determine how we handle it from there,” Andreychuk said.

Sen. Serge Joyal, the ethics committee’s deputy chair, echoed the comments of other senators this week that the harassment probe should be finished out of respect for the Senate staffers who made complaints about working for Meredith.

When that investigation was launched, in 2015, The Canadian Press reported that the six former staffers alleged Meredith was rude, unprofessional and a bully.

“It is important to take into account that if we don’t act, there are people who feel victimized who don’t get their fair day in court,” said Joyal.

Earlier Wednesday, Treasury Board President Scott Brison settled the other outstanding question: Meredith will get his pension. He said the pension entitlement is enshrined in law — the act which outlines the retirement benefits for MPs and senators — and that even if they enacted new legislation to strip Meredith of his payments, such a change wouldn’t apply retroactively.

He also accused Conservative senators of “spinning” the pension question to place responsibility on the government for Meredith’s roughly $25,000 annual payout, which he can start collecting when he turns 55 (he is 52 now). If Meredith had been expelled, he would get only his pension contributions back, plus interest, according to the Treasury Board.

“They should look at themselves in the mirror because it was the Conservatives and Stephen Harper who named Sen. Meredith to the Senate,” Brison said.

Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos responded to Brison by saying the law is clear that responsibility for pensions falls to the Treasury Board, but that “in all fairness to the government, this is uncharted water.”

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He added that the Senate has dealt with Meredith in a way that shows it won’t tolerate unethical behaviour.

Joyal said this was a driving force in their deliberations on how Meredith should be punished for the affair with a girl when she was 16 and 18 years old.

“There is no reason for anyone to doubt the Senate’s commitment to a higher standard,” said Joyal.

Andreychuk added that even though Meredith resigned, the committee’s report recommending his expulsion can still be used as a “blueprint” for future ethics breach cases.