I was pumping gas into my car at an Esso when my cellphone buzzed.

“Something happened to me that was not right,” the female voice said in June 2015. “It has been going on for two years.”

The caller was an 18-year old who, over time, detailed allegations of sexual impropriety involving a Canadian senator, who was also a married Pentecostal minister and the head of two religious charities.

She was 16 when Sen. Don Meredith began the sexual relationship. A visitor from another country, she was attending school and alone in Ottawa. Meredith’s actions were denounced in the eventual official investigation as failing to uphold “the highest standards of dignity” of the Senate.

The Senate Ethics Committee heard from Meredith behind closed doors Tuesday and will recommend to the Senate whether or not to expel him from the red chamber — the name for a lately troubled part of the Canadian government often debated in high school with the question: Should the Senate be abolished?

Former prime minister Stephen Harper appointed Meredith in 2010. Within one hour of the Star’s 2015 story on the sexual relationship, Harper kicked him out of the Conservative caucus. But he remains a senator, paid about $140,000 a year, plus travel and living expenses. Recently, I decided to examine how Meredith conducted himself in the Senate during the time he was involved with the teenager dubbed “Ms. M” by Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard. Her office is also investigating workplace harassment allegations against Meredith and an allegation he was having an affair with a senate employee.

A review by the Star of Meredith’s time reveals he does little committee work compared to other senators. While his attendance in the senate chamber is excellent, his contributions are most often to announce a special day to commemorate an event or give a speech on the importance of the future of youth — which he has said is his main focus.

Information in this story about what Meredith and Ms. M did together, and when, is based on findings in the Senate ethics report. The Star has also interviewed Ms. M, senators and senate staffers, reviewed senate expense and attendance records, and read all Senate proceedings when Meredith was present in the chamber.

Thursday, June 26, 2013 was an unremarkable day in the Senate on Parliament Hill. A report on the government’s work on “cybersecurity” was discussed; debate was held over a section of the Canada Human Rights Act; and a motion put forward to recognize June as Deaf-Blind Awareness month. The session ran from 2 to 7 p.m.

Meredith, known for giving sermon-like statements, said nothing in the chamber that day, according to Hansard, the official transcript of the proceedings. He participated in six recorded votes, abstained from two.

Back in his office in the Victoria Building, the late June sun still colouring the streets, Meredith opened his door to a 16-year-old girl he had invited over. They had met in early February at an Ottawa church event to celebrate Black History Month. Meredith spoke in the church that day of the importance of youth in society. After, he chatted with Ms. M and gave her his business card. On the back he wrote his Senate cellphone number, encouraging her to call. A student with very high marks, from overseas, she had enrolled in University of Ottawa at an early age.

June 26 was the last day the Senate sat before the summer recess. Meredith’s two staff members were gone. After some small talk, Meredith began touching her. Sitting close, he rubbed her knees, put his hands on her buttocks and tried to get into her dress. Ms. M told him to stop and asked him why an older married man would carry on like this.

“I’m a man,” Meredith said simply.

(Meredith denied many of the allegations made by Ms. M, but after interviewing her and reviewing cellphone records and communications between the senator and the girl, the ethics officer determined the sexual encounters took place.)

Out of town senators (Meredith is from the Toronto area) are given travel and housing allowance. Most senators from away take a room at the Chateau Laurier with a nightly government rate of $200. When it is in session (a bit more than half of the year) the Senate typically sits three days a week. Meredith was done that Thursday but stayed the night. He invited Ms. M back to his hotel room and promised to “only take off his socks.”

She declined. They went instead for Chinese food. He asked her for a kiss before she went home. Ms. M said no. When they had first met at the church function the previous February, Meredith had asked her out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. She declined on that occasion, too. “Something about it just didn’t feel right to me.”

Meredith told investigators he tried his best to discourage Ms. M from contacting him. “You need to find individuals your age,” he said he told her.

However, in a six-month period in early 2013, Meredith called Ms. M 29 times using his Senate cellphone. Meredith has a personal cellphone, which he told investigators he used to contact Ms. M, but those records were not produced. One of the texts he sent her using his Senate cellphone told Ms. M, “You are. Good for me.”

Ms. M, by her own account to the Star and the ethics investigator, was falling in love. Yet she was troubled by the age gap, that he was married, and a minister.

When the Senate adjourns for the summer, senators who do not live in Ottawa typically return home until mid- to late September. The Senate refused to provide the detailed expense records for Meredith, citing his privacy. Only aggregate amounts were made available and the Senate, for example, would not provide dates when Meredith stayed at the Chateau Laurier or dates of Meredith’s return trips to Toronto.

In the roughly two years (early 2013 to early 2015) that he was involved in the relationship with Ms. M, and attending Senate business, his hotel bill was $40,000 and his travel bill $60,000. Meredith often flew business class for the short hop between Toronto and Ottawa.

His office expenditures (also with no details provided) during the same two year time period were $310,000.

Months of flirting turned into a physical relationship in August 2013. With no Senate business to attend to, Meredith visited Ottawa and had dinner with her, then went with Ms. M to her apartment. She was still 16. This encounter involved Meredith partially removing his pants and touching Ms. M’s breasts and buttocks, and Ms. M partially removing her top and touching the senator’s “private parts,” according to the ethics watchdog’s report.

The age of consent in Canada is 16. It increases to 18 when there is a relationship of trust, authority or dependency.

Canadian senators are expected to participate in Senate sittings, and take part in committees that review legislation and discuss important issues of the day. Meredith’s attendance record in the Senate is excellent, but his committee work is lacking, the Star found.

For example, of the 76 days the Senate sat in 2013, Meredith missed only two days. However, where many senators attended committee meetings seven to 12 times a week (when the Senate is sitting) attendance records show he typically attends two or three committee meetings a week, and sometimes none at all. His committees over the past few years have included Aboriginal Peoples, Social Affairs, and National Security and Defence.

In the Senate, Meredith regularly invites guests, among them visiting delegations from Barbados, Jamaica and Zimbabwe, to watch the proceedings. He regularly rises to tell fellow senators of the importance of a day — it is St. John Ambulance Day, National Victims of Crime Awareness Week, or Mental Illness Awareness Week — and follows with a lengthy speech.

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By the summer of 2013, Meredith’s relationship with Ms. M was intensifying and he suggested they communicate via Skype or Viber, apps that allow for live video. During these chats both would be partially naked and their interactions progressed to a point where Meredith would masturbate on screen while looking at Ms. M. Around this time, the senator told her he would like her hair to be straight, and he sent her a $200 Interac transfer for a hair appointment. He also offered her a spot on a committee to recognize the first Black soldier to receive the Victoria Cross (the job never materialized), and bought her some towels.

Meredith’s prime focus as a senator, according to his Senate website, is youth. He has spoken passionately about this cause, routinely invoking the name of Nelson Mandela, who encouraged passion in one’s work.

“To me, that passion involves doing all I can to help make a difference in our young people’s lives, who are not only a percentage of our population, but 100 per cent of our future,” Meredith said in a Senate session in September 2014 right after the summer break. He pointed out that he works tirelessly as the executive director of the Greater Toronto Faith Alliance Centre, a charity in Richmond Hill. He is also listed as the chief contact person for the Pentecostal Praise Centre Ministries in Richmond Hill, also a charity.

It was at the GTA Faith Alliance Centre — his office when not in Ottawa — that he often had explicit video communication with Ms. M in the fall of 2014 and into 2015.

When questioned by the Senate ethics officer, Ms. M explained what typically happened.

“(Meredith) would be at his GTA Faith Alliance office and he would, like, be half-naked, essentially, and kind of masturbate if I took my top off,” she explained. This, Meredith explained to the youth, was “what adults do.” She told the investigator these interactions were frequent — sometimes he was at the alliance, his home office, or in a hotel room when he was in another country on Senate business. It also occurred when he was at the Chateau Laurier.

The Senate adjourned for the holidays on Dec. 16, 2014. Meredith stayed in Ottawa an extra day. At her apartment, before her 18th birthday, they had a sexual encounter which for the first time involved penetration, the ethics investigator concluded (Meredith denied this happened). Ms. M said the senator put his penis insider her for about a minute, which she said he called a “teaser.” When interviewed by the Senate investigator, Meredith said he did use that word but it was to describe a photograph of the partially clad youth she had sent him. Meredith does admit to having intercourse with her in February, after she turned 18.

Ms. M said they had intercourse again in May. Meredith said he did not recall the May visit. Viber messages provided to the ethics committee show that he had to return to her apartment to retrieve his watch the next day.

In March 2015, one issue on the Senate floor seemed to catch Meredith’s attention. The appointment of Joe Friday, the federal government’s Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. Meredith had a flurry of questions about how an investigation works and how the commissioner would guard against unfairly targeting someone. Later, in his own case, Meredith would complain about the level of embarrassing detail released.

“All of us are concerned about reputation and the alleging of some impropriety,” Meredith began. “How do you . . . ensure that both sides are protected when you do your investigation to ensure that, again, credibility is not destroyed, reputations are not destroyed by inaccurate information that has become public?”

Friday stressed the care that his office took, and the great lengths to keep matters confidential. Meredith kept on the topic, saying that “mistakes” can be made in an investigation, along with “an error in judgment.”

In one of his final remarks to the Senate before the Star broke the story of his involvement with Ms. M, Meredith made an impassioned plea for law societies across Canada to agree to admit to their bar admission program students from the evangelical Trinity Western University’s proposed law school. A controversy had broken out over the B.C. school’s “community covenant” that requires students to refrain from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.” Court challenges are pending in the matter.

Meredith ultimately broke off the relationship with Ms. M around this time, telling her in a text: “God has spoken with me and am (sic) not happy with me.” Meredith also wrote, “I should be leading you, not making you.”

Following the March release of the ethics report on Meredith, several high-profile senators, including former Ottawa police chief Vern White, have said the Senate should expel Meredith. Meredith responded by saying, in an interview with The Canadian Press, that these attacks are racially based, a claim he has since backed away from. He said he is sorry for his actions.

“This was a violation, a moral failing on my part,” Meredith said in a videotaped interview. “To my family, to Ms. M, to my colleagues in the Senate, to all Canadians, I deeply regret this and I am deeply sorry and I apologize from the bottom of my heart.”

Lawyer William Trudell, who now represents Meredith, said he could not comment on any of the allegations brought forward by the Star, but said “we will respond as appropriate in the proper forum.”

The Star has spoken to Ms. M several times over the past year as the case bounced from the public spotlight to the police to the senate ethics officer. The Ottawa Police opened an investigation in 2015 but closed it when, according to Ms. M, detectives told her they could not guarantee her anonymity would be protected. Ms. M told police she did not want to pursue a complaint.

Last week, Ms. M told the Star she has graduated university and is pursuing a career in Canada she finds fulfilling. “I am really getting on with my life and looking to put all of this behind me.”

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

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