A quick update for my fellow US applicants.
BG check finally changed to "in progress" a few mintues ago.
I've been asked to submit FBI certificates for myself and my spouse. The ones we submitted at the time of application (May 25) were still valid--they were about 5.5 months old at the time...just under the six month cut off CIC lists on its website: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/security/police-cert/intro.asp
To be extra safe, we applied for fresh certificates in April. Mine came through in July; spouse's is still pending.
As luck would have it, CIC sent a letter this morning asking for FBI certs. I likely confused them (as a fellow MAY AOR-er noted) with my LOE in which I had said, in short...attached are certs from Dec, 2014 but we've applied for new ones; here's proof; will send new certs later if required. Ack!! Overkill!
I'm going to wait as close to possible to the 7-days deadline and if we still don't have spouse's new cert, am going to upload whatever we have with another LOE drawing CIC's attention to the validity of the original documents at the time of initial submission. Another fellow MAY AOR-er kindly suggested possible wording.
Just wanted to share in case this info is useful to anyone applying from U.S.