Inflation exceeded the Bank of Canada’s control range for a sixth straight month, worsened by supply chain bottlenecks that are proving stubbornly persistent.

The consumer price index rose 4.4 per cent in September from a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in Ottawa. That’s the highest reading since February 2003, exceeding consensus expectations of 4.3 per cent in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

On a monthly basis, inflation was up 0.2 per cent in September. Higher food, shelter and transport prices were the main contributors. The average of the central bank’s core measures — often seen as a better gauge of underlying price pressures — ticked up to 2.67 per cent from 2.6 per cent in August.

The hot inflation readings of the last six months are deepening a communications challenge for Governor Tiff Macklem, who maintains the spike in consumer-price gains will be short lived. The data also come as traders in the overnight swaps market bet increasingly against the Bank of Canada’s guidance that policymakers won’t raise interest rates until the second half of next year…read more.