-Medical at beginning: I think they do this to make things faster, and covid has screwed things up. Apart from the ~6 month delay for covid (an estimate only), ours would have been fine with closer to six months on the COPR/visa.
-I did not fully account for fact you are from a visa waiver country (i.e. only need ETA); we needed visas to travel.
-So in theory all they need to issue you is an ETA and possibly an electronic update of COPR (or they could accept the existing COPR at border). I don't know how this works. You should try a webform, and can also try your MP's office. (As it stands you could in theory travel as immediate family member, and only question is whether CBSA will accept the existing COPR...)
-It does seem that to extent possible they are just accepting previously-done medicals. Let's hope that continues.
-Unfortunately I can only make somewhat informed guesses here. They clearly do not want people to travel unnecessarily (esp from hard-hit countries). But getting comfort in advance about how it works is quite difficult with unclear processes afterwards. And actually getting someone to look at the file and figure out what is to be done is right now the hardest step (presumably esp so in UK right now).
-Obviously hard to say how will proceed but I think you have some reason to be hopeful that it will work out, even if you don't know exactly how right now.
Good luck.
