I was told as well by CIC that the delay was due to Qc. They've been telling me this since last September (reached the 12 months mark in October, so now at the 16th month). I got annoyed and called (again) in late January and was told (again) the delay was due to Qc and to contact the Qc immigration department to see with them what was going on... Sounded very weird to me, but at this point, if our request has been put on hold for almost 6 months because of Qc, might as well give it a try and call them.
So I called Qc. The lady I spoke with was very diligent and trying to understand what was going on, and reaching out to managers and others to get more info for me. None of them understood wtf cic was talking about. She said it made no sense--yes there are quotas in place, but they are only applied for the issuance of CSQ, and since we've had our CSQ for almost a year, they had nothing more to do with our file and it was now fully in the hands of CIC. Like I said, she still reached out to others to try and understand if maybe she was missing something, but no one understood what CIC was tlaking about as apparently, once you have your CSQ, you should no longer be impacted by the quotas. She really felt bad that she didn't have more info for me.
So I then reached out to my federal and provincial MPs. Federal MP never got back to me. Provincial MP replied that at this point, it was no longer in Qc's hand and they didn't understand why I got that answer from CIC, and that for them to get involved further, I would need CIC to provide some kind of letter explaining why they say it's up to QC now.
You guys can imagine that at this point, we are feeling like a ping pong ball. No one knows or will tell us what is going on, and everyone is pointing the finger at the other one.