I'm a couple of weeks from the 8-month mark, too, and the silence is a bit deafening at this point. I keep telling myself that we will hear something any time now.
I can't get mad, though. I've worked for a large bureaucracy for much of my adult life (large university), and I married into another (RCAF), and this is just how bureaucracies are. SLOW and inefficient. I wish it were otherwise. But it's mostly just normal people doing a job, usually adequately. It stinks we're the ones whose lives are on hold while the wheels turn so slowly, but c'est la vie.
I just don't think it's an issue that the majority of Canadians care deeply about. It affects a small percentage of the population. I know in the US, that most average citizens are mostly just concerned with border security and "keepin' them dirty furriners out," NOT with making the process of legal immigration to reunite/keep families together a smoother or faster process. Minus the chest-thumpingly patriotic vitriol that seems rather uniquely American, I'd bet that most Canadians feel similarly, that they want applicants screened to try to ensure that immigrants who make it to Canada are on the up-and-up, and it if takes a while to get through that process, so be it.
