Sen. Patrick Brazeau took his seat in the red chamber Tuesday, nearly three years after he was suspended by his fellow senators over an investigation into expense claims. The RCMP dropped the investigation in July.

The Conservative appointee from Quebec, who is now sitting as an independent, told CTV’s Power Play he’s “ready to go and just so, so proud to be back to a job that I loved and will continue to enjoy doing.”

Brazeau can now stay there in the job -- which has a base salary of $145,400 -- until he turns 75 in 2049. “If I live that long,” he quipped.

The former national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples said he will continue to work on indigenous issues, pointing that he was studying the rights of First Nations people living off reserves when he was suspended alongside Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy in November 2013.

Asked whether he believes the Senate’s reputation can be restored after the spending scandal, Brazeau said people “talk about the so-called spending scandal” but that wasn’t “the real scandal.”

“I think the scandal should have been a government and a political party that abused their power to throw people under the bus,” he said. “Having been under that bus and having survived the bus rolling over me, that’s what the scandal was really about.”

Sen. Duffy was acquitted on all charges related to his Senate expense claims in April. The RCMP closed its investigation into Wallin in May.