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.
National Post: 'Not informed': Mélanie Joly tells inquiry she was kept in the dark for years on foreign interference
Earlier this week, current national security and intelligence adviser Nathalie Drouin said she had seen no evidence there are “traitors” in Parliament and that some of the conclusions in the NSICOP report made her “very uncomfortable.”
Mendicino said he believes there is a need to “clear the air” about NSICOP’s findings.
“I am very worried that the entire conversation around foreign interference and parliamentarians is being transformed into a kangaroo court with very little regard for the process of understanding how we assess intelligence,” he told the inquiry.
“I think it is extremely important that we heed the opinion and the evidence that has been given to this commission, from Ms. Drouin, from CSIS, around the fact that… this NSICOP report has gone further than where they are at in the assessment of the intelligence,” he added.
