Meredith staff win $500,000 over abuse

OTTAWA• The Senate of Canada will pay nearly half a million dollars in compensation to nine employees of disgraced former senator Don Meredith who say they suffered abuse, including sexual harassment, on the job.

The decision revealed Wednesday to award $498,000 in compensation — plus $30,000 in legal fees — comes more than a year after a four-year Senate investigation concluded there was a pattern of inappropriate behaviour by Meredith while he was a senator.

That included demeaning, belittling and humiliating staff members as well as kissing, touching and intimidation that created what the Senate ethics officer described as a “poisoned work environment.”

But it was only this summer that former Quebec appeals court judge Louise Otis was brought in to look at potential compensation for the employees following complaints about a lack of recognition of their suffering.

The Senate says the compensation amount was based on Otis’s recommendations.

THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN A WORKPLACE.

“Harassment was experienced by almost all complainants in various forms which, however, had the same constant: an abuse of authority that created a poisonous work environment,” Otis’s report says.

“These acts of misconduct manifested themselves in particular by humiliation, denigration, sudden attacks of yelling and screaming, telephone calls during the night to perform additional work, requirement of work during sick leave, threats, bullying, intimidation.

“Almost all complainants described their work experience as ‘the worst thing that ever happened to me in a workplace.’”

The Senate’s slowness in dealing with the complaints is an aggravating factor in determining what the victims should be paid, the report says.

It does not specify how much should be paid to each complainant.

Meredith, who was first appointed to the Senate in 2010, resigned from the upper chamber in 2017 rather than face probable expulsion.

The Senate’s ethics committee had j ust r ecommended he be expelled after concluding he had used his position to pursue a sexual relationship with an underage girl.

Meredith, a Pentecostal minister, has not been charged criminally in connection with any of these matters.

SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS Former senator Don Meredith leaves a Senate committee in April 2017. The Senate will pay nine of his former employees $498,000 in compensation.