I don’t think so, I ordered gcms notes and it said sponsor approval and transfer to vo were sent in bulk. Nothing about pre arrival being in bulk. From aor 2 to pre arrival it was 36 days in between but the holidays - Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years are apart of that so, I’m not sure if that also delayed it. Some people it takes 1 day for pre arrival lol so I’m not sure what the logic is!
There are different concepts behind this 'bulk' word.
Your gcms notes likely referred to a bulk mail application. This
seems to be just a server application that sends out emails and generates the related pdf attachments etc. It likely runs at night or on weekends, etc, or possibly just when the server is less busy and less network load, but it doesn't mean that they only do this once a month or whatever - seems to be at almost any time. Part of the significance from the gcms notes perspective is that IRCC doesn't (I think) retain a copy of the actual correspondence - it's basically a program that retains only the inputs (name, address, file number etc) and the fact that the correspondence was sent. (In other words, nothing else changes). There is language in the gcms notes that indicates they don't have this correspondence on file in original, it's just a note that it was sent.
Some here have been
speculating that some offices do certain steps - like issue PPRs - for a lot of applicants all at once. This may be the case from time to time, or there were one-off cases (Ottawa VO issued a fair number just before the end of year, likely to meet ministerial targets). Or maybe some offices periodically have 'spring cleaning' days where they attempt to clear the decks (possibly also for quarterly or other numbers). Maybe they just bunch certain steps because it's easier to use the software to generate PPRs if you do ten or twenty in a row. Or maybe the staff member who habitually does a certain step has been out of office or sick or whatever.
But overall: there's no
clear indication that IRCC and all offices habitually bunch such things - although sometimes it may look like it. The "bulk system" stuff in the gcms is a different concept (and from what I've seen doesn't seem to mean a lot of them being done at once).