MubinSultan said:
if we are talking about cec then its only 8000, and out of that at least 5500+ are completed, from where did you got this number 16000???
CEC category is just one small group of immigrants.
Background/security check for any Canadian embassy in the world, and for all immigration applications will be processed by Government of Canada.
Unfortunately, officers in embassies or processing offices are not responsible for that, and they have to wait for an answer from responsible organization.
That's why VOs can't do anything, until they finish the job first!
btw, I have seen some visa processing in other countries told above reason for why some applications took a long time in the past few months.
e.g. If PanAM games require 20,000 visas in a short time, then government have to prioritize background check over something else. (not saying this is the reason of our delay, as we don't know)
You can read the number of applications, and even average of processing time for background check, security check, etc. in yearly reports of CIC website.
One example of report for 2013:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2013/permanent/01.asp