Thanks everyone in this thread for giving us an idea of what to expect.
My husband and I submitted our application to Sydney, NS on May 23, 2019, was transferred to Mississauga on July 24, and just today (August 8) forwarded to the Los Angeles Visa Office.
My lawyer said she didn't think they'd ask for an interview with my husband and I, but now reading everyone's experiences in this thread I'm kind of worried that they will...
Our time line so far:
24 May, 2019 - App received
13 Jul, 2019 - AOR1
13 Jul, 2019 - ECAS IP
16 July, 2019 - MR
16 July, 2019 - Biometrics Fee Payment requested (but they have not yet requested the biometrics themselves be done)
17 July, 2019 - SA
23 July, 2019 - Medical Exam
24 July, 2019 - App transferred to Mississauga VO
2 Aug, 2019 - Biometrics Fee Receipt submitted
2 Aug, 2019 - Medical Received (has not passed yet; my husband is a chronic smoker and they may be suspicious of his chest x-ray)
8 Aug, 2019 - App transferred to Los Angeles VO
I am a Canadian citizen living in Alberta (where we plan to live together in the future) and my husband is a US citizen living in MI.
My husband has 4 criminal charges all in 2004 or earlier - 2 of marijuana possession (less than 1 g each time) and 2 of domestic assault (he served 1 day for the first and 10 days for the second; he didn't actually cause any injury to her or even try to hurt her). My husband also lived in Australia for 8 months in 2006. We declared all of these things in our application (included a rehabilitation application package), and we included PCC from Australia, the two states in the US where he has lived, plus the FBI clearance.
We met online in June 2009 and have maintained contact since then except for a 2 year break from Nov 2014 - Nov 2016 (we were still just friends at that point and didn't start dating until afterwards). We got engaged Jun 2017 and were married in June 2018, so we'd been married for just under a year when we submitted our application. No dependants. He has one ex-wife (the one who filed the domestic assault charges), and we submitted the divorce certificate in our application package. We have pictures from our wedding (only our families were present) and from our visits. I have been visiting him in the US about once every 2-3 months since June 2017; pending rehabilitation approval he is currently inadmissible to Canada due to his charges.
Red flags would most likely be the domestic assault charges, though they may be concerned about the 2 year break as well (even though we included an explanation)... haven't asked for GCMS notes yet since we have a pretty good guess of why our application was forwarded to LVO, and my lawyer says everything is currently going as expected. I guess now we have the long months of silence ahead of us... hopefully not followed by a sudden interview request, but we'll see