At the committee meeting, NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said action was long overdue and migrant workers tied to a single employer were reluctant to speak out about abuse because it was difficult to find another employer under the immigration rules.
She asked whether migrants who come here to work on temporary permits should be given a clear route to permanent residency when they arrive.
Mr. Miller said the government was looking at reforms to allow construction workers, who are in short supply and needed to build more homes, to find a path to settling in Canada.
But he said he was not in favour of giving all temporary migrants an automatic route to citizenship, or abolishing closed work permits altogether.
The federal government’s immigration levels plan might be working successfully according to a recent analysis, but its long-term impact remains unknown, say an opposition MP and observers.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s immigration critic, told The Hill Times in a March 11 email that a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report offers a demographic snapshot of the government’s immigration levels plan, but does not examine the short or long-term impacts of the Liberals’ “drastic” policy changes.
“Immigration policy cannot be judged by population projections alone. We must look at the real consequences these decisions are having on people, families, communities, and the economy,” she said.
