I STRONGLY recommend the below instructions provided by another userbof this forum. DO NOT CALL YOUR VISA OFFICE. IT'S POINTLESS. This line has information from all visa offices including CIO Sydney, Ottawa, London and others. I have confirmed this works from start to finish of the EE process for outland applications GLOBALLY.
Use google hangouts if you can. If not, a service such as Skype calling is your best option. Calling from a landline will cost you heavily.
Before you call, it's important to understand what the agent on the phone has access to. These are not the people processing your case and they can not see GCMS.
Ignore any suggestions that it's being reviewed or looked at, the people on the phone have limited access to information. They can see:
If the status is listed as not started (it will always say this unless it's one of the below statuses. There is no 'in progress' , unfortunately)
If the status is rejected/failed/refused
If the status is review required (which means it'll be waiting for a secondary review. This is the only thing GCMS notes are useful in identifying details of, otherwise they're pointless)
If the status is passed
If there is an additional document request
And that's it. For data security, they can't really see much else and they have no access to your file or what's in it. Nor the GCMS.
Phone (from outside of Canada [block caller ID]): 1 613 944 4000
Ask about,
Criminality,
Security
Eligibility
You can use these options (wait until it's ready to accept an option): 1 1 1. Then you'll get transferred to IRCC (the same as the 888 # inside Canada and you'll hear a male voice). Then you can use options 2 1 1 0 to get to an operator "fast" (it's the family sponsorship information menu tree but it goes to the same phone operators). If you follow the tree normally to get info about your application, you'll have to enter your application number, date of birth, and listen to a long read-out of its status before you get to get in a phone queue, and 2/3 the time it will just say "we're too busy. call back later" instead of putting you in a queue.