I do not understand why some people bring up USA immigration process when Canada's is criticised. USA doesn't depend on immigrants to drive the economy. It is already the number one in the world. The only reason they even have some programs is to look-like a pro-immigration. They purposely do not invest in processes and systems improvements, that's why in this time and age, their whole process is purely run on physical papers for applications and they actually use post to send them! They lost the application file belonging to one of my cousins, and despite searching for a year and a half, they still couldn't locate it. Each office says the other office has it till he hired a lawyer to help him and his wife. The lawyer pushed and followed the USIC (or whatever it is called) immigration, but after further 6 months of searching, the lawyer finally advised them to cancel that application and start a new one! Imagine the standard. He was actually shocked when I explained to IRCC's procedures and the online portal as well as ordering GCMS file to see the progress on the application.
USA purposely makes the immigration processes slow and tiredsome. While Canada's economy depends on it, and they actually put huge budgets to improve as well as constantly increase resources.
So, you cannot justify IRCC's shortcomings in the pandemic with USA's obvious disregard to new immigrants.
IRCC failed the potential economic applicants (Pre-ITA candidates) by not communicating with them. They should have announced that they will halt FSW draws till border restriction for this stream is removed. And once the restriction is removed from it, they should have started conducting the general draws or at least provided an update if there has been a change of plans by IRCC (i.e. despite border opening, they want to invite more CEC applicants to meet the 2021 target due to seamless landing).
Although the communication is still a lot to be desired for, at least for FSW with AORs, they explicitly mentioned that they aren't prioriting them (us) because of the travel restrictions both on the website and via emails. Furthermore, they did send us two surveys in 2020 and 2021, although we never heard from them how helpful that was to them, at least it gave peace of mind knowing you are in IRCC plans. But now the restriction is removed, the continuous CEC prioritisation does not make sense anymore and this needs to either change or IRCC needs to inform us to why it is still a priority despite the open border.
We are entitled to receive communications from IRCC because every outland applicant's life and career depends on the outcome of the applications. We are just asking for communications, so we can plan and patiently wait. However, it is not fair to just wait endlessly with zero guidance and communication. We are human. Patient comes when there's a clear and understandable plan is announced by IRCC. Webform and twitter bombardment wouldn't have happened.
Ps: apologies for any grammatical errors. Been awake the whole night and spent many hours reading the last 40 pages of this thread!