Senate committee calls for expulsion over sex with teen

• The Senate ethics committee has recommended t hat t he upper house take the unprecedented step of expelling disgraced Sen. Don Meredith for engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.

It’s now up to the full Senate, which has never before expelled a member, to decide whether to accept or reject the recommendation, which also calls on the chamber to declare Meredith’s seat vacant.

“He has brought disrepute to himself and to the institution,” the committee said in a scathing report released Tuesday.

"Your committee is of the opinion that Sen. Meredith’s misconduct has demonstrated that he is unfit to serve as a senator.

His presence in the chamber would in itself discredit the institution.

“No lesser sanction than expulsion would repair the harm he has done to the Senate.”

Meredith must be given five sitting days in which to respond to the report, should he wish, so a vote on his fate can’t occur before next Tuesday at the earliest.

Meredith was with his family, hadn’t yet read the detailed report and would have no immediate comment, said his lawyer, Bill Trudell.

The senator does have a right to speak to the Senate and a right of final reply and would decide in the next few days whether to exercise those options, he added.

Trudell said there were aspects of the report that troubled him, although he would not specify exactly what whose were.

“What they call for is a unique, never- used- before power to expel,” Trudell said. “What they are saying is that there is no other alternative and that’s precedent-setting. I suggested there were alternatives.”

According to the report, Meredith’s lawyer proposed that the senator be suspended without pay for one or two years. But the committee concluded that “a suspension would reinstate only temporarily the Senate’s dignity and integrity, which would again be compromised when Sen. Meredith would resume his seat.”

The Senate has undisputed authority to suspend senators and did so recently with senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau while they were under investigation for allegedly filing fraudulent expense claims.

Its power to expel is less clear.

The committee ultimately accepted the legal opinion of the law clerk and parliamentary counsel to the Senate that the Constitution confers on the upper house the same privileges enjoyed by the United Kingdom’s House of Commons. Since the U. K. Commons can permanently eject a member, so too can Canada’s Senate.

Trudell said he was not in a position to comment on whether the Senate does in fact have the power to kick Meredith out.

The committee’s recommendation follows an explosive report from Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard this year.