You are absolutely right!
Getting an AOR without the test means nothing ...
To be honest, that means only one thing: That Canada has stopped granting citizenship, de facto (in fact, in practice) to all applicants after March 2020, having had their test dates canceled, or to come .
There is no more citizenship because more test (The test is a legal condition to obtain the citizenship). We should not therefore rejoice for a simple aor.
You have to make noise ... Or have to wait years and years. (Code 699 allowing federal employees to be paid with our taxes without doing anything + their very very powerful union, which would be able to demand a daily rate of covid infection of zero people before returning to work = Years and years additional to wait...
But also a risk of a majority conservative government in the meantime = risk of retroactive citizenship law change = your envelopes will be returned to you with refund.