Thank you.. I did see the tracker and combining with the message from BLS about 4-5 days for processing it to CGI (not that i trust anything they say at this point), i want to believe that we are good to travel on the 9th.BLS takes 10 to 15 days to act on postal applications and pass them on to the consulate. Once that happens you can expect to get the visa in 3-4 days -- so about 3 weeks in total. Getting the visa by Dec 9th looks possible, but it all hinges on status changing to processing at CGI latest by Dec 4th.
See timeline of other postal applications in the tracker: Entry Visa Tracker