At the risk of coming across like a stern elementary school teacher trying to corral a pack of sugar-hyped children, but someone needs to say it: patience, patience, my little ones, patience!
Perhaps there has been no comparable poised-at-the-starting-gate-anticipation since the great Oklahoma land rush in the U.S., in 1889.
There was a reason for that rush, it was a first to grab gets the dirt affair, typical American approach one might observe.
In contrast, there is NO reason for lining up at the starting gate to get a 3/5 rule application made. On the contrary, there are many reasons to approach the transition cautiously, patiently, letting others test the new form and presence calculator for example.
While it is obvious that much of the forum whining about IRCC incompetence is exaggerated if not unwarranted, IRCC is a big bureaucracy, one of Canada's biggest bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is what bureaucracy does. Bureaucracies tend to not have a great track record in smoothly making big changes. IRCC (CIC) is hardly an exception.
Rush and be the forum's first new rules casualty.
Or exercise some patience. Prudently review the new form, the new presence calculator, and the new instructions. Wait to see that there are no wrinkles in the rollout. Read those new instructions thoroughly and follow them carefully.
In the latter regard, there have been scores and scores of questions asked the last couple days, the answer to which will depend on the actual content in the new application form, and the specific instructions for completing the application. Sure, it is relatively easy to anticipate many, even most changes, but that is NEVER a good substitution for reading and following the actual instructions, including the specific details in the application form items themselves.
For those of you anticipating IRCC will have it all up and running in the early hours of October 11, good luck with that.
Will there be a flood of new applications? A surge? Some increase?
Obviously the number of new applications being made will increase following the changes. The number of those eligible for citizenship will increase by somewhere around a quarter million in just one day. A significant percentage of those newly eligible PRs are very likely to apply in the coming weeks and months.
This has been discussed ad nauseam in the forum. Various forecasts have been proposed. No one really knows much more than that it is highly likely that in the coming months many more applications will be made than the number made during a comparable time period in the last year, and particularly more than in the year prior to that.
IRCC has promised to take measure to accommodate this transition with minimal impact on meeting service objectives, including routine processing time lines. Sure, that is a promise it will be very difficult to keep.
But, as much as it is easy to foresee a significant increase in the number of applications, it is way more difficult to forecast how this will actually impact processing timelines. Some? A little? A lot? For a brief period of time? For months? A year? Longer?
There are many, many reasons to be optimistic about IRCC's capacity to implement and adapt to the changes, including a temporary increase in applications being made. (Within a year, two at the most, the flow of new applications should return to historical norms relative to the number of new immigrants.)
That said, as already noted, recognizing how much bureaucracies tend to stumble a bit at first, when there are big changes, there are probably significantly higher risks of a problem for, say, the first ten or fifteen thousand applications made under new rules.
So, as I already noted, sure, one can rush and be the first in the forum to report being a new rules casualty. Some may enjoy wearing that badge of honour.
Waiting a week to apply is not likely to affect how long the process takes overall. A few thousand more applications in the hopper in the first week is not going to break the bank. My sense is that a month is not likely to have much of an impact on how long it takes to get to the oath.
But no speculation necessary to read through this forum and take account of the carnage wreaked by rushing it. One rushes at their own peril.