Thanks for posting some actual inside information -- this makes a lot of sense, and basically aligns what I said in my post above this in that the countries with more accessible background checks are uncoincidentally probably also the visa-exempt countries. I suspect if we started tracking better which apps were from visa-exempt countries versus non-exempt we'd find the patterns more similar and predictable.So one of the things that I heard from a friend who used to work at CIC is that when applications are received they eveluate if the background check can be done from Canada in a transparent way or not. So it wont come as a surprise if US cases are sent to Missisuaga because information from US is easily accessible to Canadian authorities. Same applies for countries such as Australia, UK and many european countries. This is not the only consideration , ofcourse the amount of backlog also dictates the outcome.