Expected to exceed this year's permanent resident acceptance target - Federal Government Immigration Strategy Effective

"The Trudeau government's new strategy to attract more permanent residents appears to be working," said a senior federal immigration official.
"Canada added 26,600 permanent residents in January," Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told Bloomberg News via video. That's up nearly 10% from the same period last year, before the coronavirus outbreak began. “If you take into account additional immigration by mid-February, the government is almost 40 per cent ahead of the figure needed to meet the 2021 target,” Mendicino said.
“Now I am confident because I have gained momentum,” Mendicino added.

The Canadian border has been closed since March due to non-essential travel restrictions. This was directly responsible for a decrease of about 50 per cent in the number of new immigrants, from 341,175 a year ago to 184,370. Immigration is seen as important to increasing Canada's workforce and is seen as a driving force in increasing demand for housing and other services.
Canada is still restricting non-essential international travel, and there is no timetable for resuming international travel. The new immigration strategy is an attempt to make up for it by providing permanent residency to more people already in the country, such as temporary foreign workers and international students.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in October that the government would increase its 2021 target of 50,000 jobs from 351,000. We need to have enough staff,” he said.

In another sign of intensified efforts, the government issued ITAs to more than 27,000 applicants in the Canadian Experience Immigration (CEC) category of Express Entry in mid-February. This is a record number in the history of immigration and has already been issued to domestic residents.
"This demonstrates our goal of meeting the 401,000 immigration target, five times higher than usual," Mendicino said. That's five times more than we've drawn once in the department's history. It is a testament to its ability to speed up landing and carry 401,000 aircraft.”
Of course, any effort to bolster immigration comes under the condition that the economy fully recovers and needs more workers, but there aren't enough jobs right now.
The domestic labor market is reeling from the pandemic after some of the recovery that took place over the summer and fall has lost momentum after the second lockdown.

More than 850,000 jobs were lost during the pandemic, raising the unemployment rate to 9%. Nonetheless, Mendicino said the skilled worker gap was large and new permanent residents were needed to fill the gap.