Why the Senator must go — soon

Details damning of senator’s pursuit of teen

When they met at a Black History Month event at an Ottawa church in February 2013, the “Hon. Rev. Dr. Don Meredith-Senator Ontario,” as he once modestly signed a reference letter, was 48, three times the age of a young woman known only as Ms. M.

He was a senator, the founder and executive director of a Toronto non-profit supporting at-risk youth and newcomers, a former Pentecostal pastor, and a bit of a wheel in Toronto’s diverse black community, columnist Christie

Blatchford writes. Ms. M. was a 16-year-old Ottawa university student whose parents lived in another country.

For the next two years, Meredith engaged in a calculated effort to both woo her and wear down her doubts. On Tuesday, the Senate’s ethics and conflict-of-interest committee recommended that Meredith be expelled from the Senate, a first in the history of the Red Chamber.

The senator, now 52, has five sitting days to respond, so there won’t be a vote by the full Senate until next week at the earliest.

In the modern world, an allegation of sexual harassment has morphed into a broad charge, in that it is sometimes levelled in what surely appears to cynical old eyes to have been ill-advised but consensual relationships among relative equals.

This was not the case with the “Hon. Rev. Dr. Don Meredith-Senator Ontario,” as he once modestly signed a reference letter, and the young woman known only as Ms. M. When they met at a Black History Month event at an Ottawa church in February of 2013, he was 48, three times her age.

He was a senator well-ensconced (it doesn’t take long to acquire the to-the-man-or-born attitude), having been appointed in 2010; the founder and volunteer executive director of the Greater Toronto Faith Alliance Learning Centre (a non-profit supporting at-risk youth and newcomers); a former Pentecostal pastor; and a bit of a wheel in Toronto’s diverse black community.

Ms. M. was 16, a university student living in Ottawa and, but for a brother, pretty much on her own — her parents lived in an unidentified foreign country.

She was the very definition of at-risk youth, and Meredith appears to have had her number in a New York minute.

She came to the church event to get his picture and shake his hand. She left with his cellphone number.

And the ugly picture painted by the excellent report Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard wrote in March is that for the next two years, Meredith engaged in a calculated effort to both woo her and wear down her doubts.

A word, first, about that report. Meredith’s lawyer took the position that the draft version of it went into “an unnecessary level of detail.”