Congrats. Seems like NDVO is currently processing applications April/May. Prior to the festive celebrations, the trend was to see DM and PPR within 2-3 days of receiving the pre arrival. However, it now has changed and there is no definite pattern. Lets hope that we all get the update soon.
It's easy to over-interpret esp / incl reports from NDVO because there are so many (biggest source country for Canada by far). For every 'batch' there are some that get processed earlier (simpler files) and some later, more complex. They're not just working on april/may - april/may files start to get opened and some are simple and get approval quickly.
Also for the pre-arrival to PPR stages - NDVO has more obvious seasonality than most other offices (not just because of holidays), probably because of student visa timing as well.
The PPR/counterfoil operation in NDVO is probably several times over the next-largest and way, way bigger than most. Just from PR visas it's probably close to 10,000 a month - and in regular TRVs and student permits, it's enormous. And we know the student permit timing is concentrated toward end of summer and end of calendar year (in terms of expected departures, the counterfoil printing needs to be somewhat in advance of that).
Of
course they're scheduling and putting some types of requests in holding periods to be able to process - just even the physical handling of that many files. And pulling staff from one type of file/decision making to others when there are seasonal demands.
Not worth reading too much into some of these changes - the patterns are probably not specific to individual files, just other stuff going on.