There was a Citizenship Oath Ceremony at Francis Morrison Library in Saskatoon today and as I was in vicinity, I decided to go and see for myself how many Saskatonians were becoming citizens today (to get a feeling of what is the processing number of applicants)
Also in one of the past posts, somebody had suggested that one should visit the oath ceremony and ask the CIC staff about the delays on processing times for Saskatoon, so I thought I will do that as well.
There were 45 Saskatonians who became citizens today. I asked couple of applicants when they had submitted their applications and when they gave test, and found that most of them had applied between 2011 and 2013 and most of them had done their test in November 2014. As mentioned in one of the earlier post on this forum, 5 oath ceremonies from 12th January to 16th January have been scheduled for Saskatoon, and if each ceremony had 45 people taking oath, this would mean 220 Saskatonians would become citizens.
I managed to speak to a CIC clerk who was assisting Judge Terrence O'Malley
for the oath ceremony, and he mentioned that in 2014, they have tripled the amount of applications who have been finalized (these are the applicants from 2011 to 2013).
He also mentioned that they are hoping that with implementation of 1 step process, the processing time will be shortened to 12 months from start to finish for 2015/2016.
This sounds promising knowing that Saskatoon has a rough population of 250,000 this means that the number of citizen applications would be also be proportional, and the new applicants from August 2014 would have their case finalized within 12 months (Also for applicants prior to August 2014 may get their cases finalized sooner as they are trying to clear up the backlog as indicated in the CIC website
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/about_us/mandate/citizenship.asp.
Going by the following previous posts below from @ simkr and @ redstone :
This would mean that those who will be taking test in January should get their oaths by March/April which resonates with what the CIC clerk said to me and I think it is promising (Though not as fast as GTA where the whole process for many is completed in 6 to 8 months!!).
Below are the photos of the Oath ceremony in Saskatoon today.