in the 2006 federal election and also down from the 18.3% that the Conservative candidate would receive in the federal election held seven months after the by-election. Meredith is a social conservative who has spoken out against pre-marital sex and stated that "when we have marriages, we don't have these social problems." Meredith has also stated that he would like to see the age of sexual consent raised to 18 from 14 which was at odds with the then-Conservative government's stated intention to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16. Nonetheless, Meredith had supported New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Parliament (MP) Bill Siksay's private member's bill to add gender identity to the list of distinguishable group traits protected from hate speech by the Criminal Code and to allow judges to take into account whether crimes were motivated by hatred of transgender or transsexual people when determining the offender's sentence. In opposition, Stephen Harper had opposed Siksay's predecessor, former NDP MP Svend Robinson's successful private member's bill that added sexual orientation to the law in 2004. Senator Meredith was appointed to the Canadian Senate on December 18, 2010 on the advice of Prime Minister Harper, and joined the Conservative caucus. In September 2012, Meredith was criticized for attending a cultural event at Carleton University organized by the Iranian embassy at a time when the Canadian government was urging a boycott of Iran. In contravention of his government's position on Iran, Meredith travelled to Iran in 2012 in attempts to forge business deals with the government. In 2014, despite not being authorized by the Senate, he attended the National Prayer Breakfast for notable preachers and politicians in the United States. Meredith expensed the first class trip for himself and his wife along with the hotel cost to the Senate and was later forced to repay the expense. Harassment complaints and sexual misconduct investigation Workplace harassment and bullying in Meredith's office were first brought up with a human resources manager in 2013. Two years later, in February 2015, Quintet Consulting Corp, a third-party firm, was hired to investigate because Pierre Claude Nolin, the Speaker of the Senate of Canada, had noticed a higher than usual turnover rate in Meredith's office. The Quintet report was submitted in July 2015 and led to Meredith being formally investigated by the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer. Meredith initially denied that an ethics investigation