Thanks. Was looking for some thoughts like these only. I completely understand the unpredictability aspect of the process but looking at how things are moving, I am personally aiming for March / April. IRCC / CIC are on to it and you can see that haste.I think by April/May this year. Reasons:
1. The mandate letter explicitly states to reduce the backlogs. The last time there was something this official (i.e. memo stating focus on inlanders), the government really took it seriously (i.e. CEC megadraw, incredible processing speeds for CEC applications, TR to PR etc.)
2. As is known, the government will not do any CEC nor FSW draws until they get a better grasp on the backlogs. By not doing draws (especially CEC draws), this is creating a tremendous amount of pressure as there are thousands who might lose their status while in Canada. So, there is the urgency to restart draws asap.
3. In looking at the latest numbers, there were about 120K people from the economic class as per December 15, 2021 (CEC + FSW + PNP). I forgot the average amount of people in each application but to be conservative, divide this number by 2 (amount of people in each application) which gives us 60K applications.
a. Using IRCC's own numbers, they processed about 15K applications towards the latter half of 2021 each month.
b. We also know that the government is allocating 85 million towards immigration
c. So, its safe to say that the number of applications being processed will be greater than 15K.
d. Assuming then that they'd be able to process 20K applications a month (which is quite do-able), you're looking at 3 months to clear the entire backlog which comes to around March but to be conservative, expect in April/May.
Also, just a thought - last year in March my PNP nomination came and after submitting it in March end, we go the whole OINP file processed within 2 months which is not bad for the COVID wave #2 times. Things will move fast for sure