TORONTO — Plunging Canadian immigration during the pandemic threatens to feed more persistent inflation pressures than the Bank of Canada is expecting, with data already showing signs of rising worker shortages that could push wages higher as the economy reopens.
But in recent years, Canada has relied much more than the United States on immigration to boost its workforce. With borders closed, the number of new permanent residents fell last year to 185,000, from 341,000 in 2019.

The pace has picked up this year, with 70,000 new permanent residents added in the first quarter, compared with 41,000 in the final quarter of 2020, but some of that increase comes amid a push to transition more foreign students and workers already in the country to resident status, rather than actual new arrivals.
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