Senators have voted to ask Governor General Mary Simon to have former Senator Don Meredith stripped of his “Honourable” title.

Meredith resigned from the upper chamber amid a sexual misconduct scandal and Ottawa police charged him last October with sexual assault and criminal harassment.

According to official protocol, senators are to be styled as “Honourable” for life.

But just before the motion was passed in the upper chamber, senators broadened it, calling for Meredith as well as any former senator convicted of a criminal offence by way of indictment to be stripped of the “Honourable” title.

Senators also amended the motion to call on Simon to make this decision herself, instead of asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to request that Simon make the change.

Jamaica-born Meredith was appointed to the Senate on the advice of former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2010.

In 2017, the Senate ethics officer concluded that Meredith had violated the chamber’s code of ethics by engaging in a relationship with a girl when she was 16, and recommended that he be expelled.

At the time, Meredith acknowledged the sexual relations outlined in the report but said nothing had taken place until she turned 18.

A second Senate investigation, released in 2019, found Meredith had repeatedly bullied, threatened and intimidated his staff, as well as touched, kissed and propositioned some of them.