There are hundreds of thousands of citizenship applications pending with IRCC and here on the forum and the spreadsheet about 3-4% of that volume is tracked - at best.
Some paper applications are definitely processed faster that doesn't mean all the paper applications are. There are still many early stage updates like 'test invite' from paper applicants from mid-2021 and many paper applicants still waiting for tests, you just have to look.
It's obviously important IRCC to synchronize application times for all modes. But in a system like this there will always be issues. Posts on this forum dating back to 2014 complain others who submitted after them were being processed before them.
Online applications from late 2020 and early 2021 were way faster than paper for a while, there were some complaints, - mostly regrets - but I don't believe it was anything nearly as toxic as it has become now.
Now it's just a couple of people that divided the forum and pitting online applicants against paper and made the forum too toxic to visit even once a day.
Again, IRCC needs to do a better job but I'm more unhappy they still have huge 2019/20 backlogs. There are some posts from those applicants in other threads - mostly about hiring attorneys and stuff like that - but I don't see them going to every single thread on the citizenship forum and start hijacking every conversation.
Imagine if they go to the 2021 forum or come here and start quoting update posts on this thread and telling "this is not justified" or "why are they processing 2021/22 applications before 2019/20".
Then, there are geographic discrepancies among offices. Typically GTA, Windsor, Niagara Falls have the best processing times, Montreal , Vancouver, Sydney and Eastern Provinces, Saskatchewan locations have average case times, Edmonton and Alberta in general seems to have the worst times. Imagine if someone from Edmonton goes to Ontario threads and starts calling out every update. For some reason that doesn't happen this often.
I think the reason is many people understand when they see Ontario is faster, it's just some applications from Ontario are faster. There are people from 2019 from some of the fastest processing offices in Ontario still waiting for DM and oath and it's not a small number.
This forum has essentially become a place where people show up and ask for the 2022 spreadsheet link and as soon as they see some applications are processing faster than theirs, they start writing. I bet most of them haven't ever bothered to look at 2019 to 2021 spreadsheets or threads.
How many people here would be happy if IRCC comes out and says they're going into a strict first-in-first-out mode and will process only backlogged 2019-2020 applications for the next full year and everyone else will have to wait?
Or if they start issuing DM and oath at once for online applicants and paper becomes a lower priority, will the same people demand equality?
Also at times, temporary workers and PR visas are processed much faster than citizenship, some people here mention that I don't think a lot of them went to the visa forums and start asking people there why their applications are faster.
Again, IRCC needs to do a much better job especially with older applications and also different intake modes like paper and online. Online tests, interviews and oath are all a huge step towards that. There also appears to be a significant progress in different offices sharing workloads.
I also believe most online citizenship applicants use the mode for convenience than speed.
I'm not saying people shouldn't speak up for their personal goals but making every single conversation about online vs paper will eventually make this forum completely unusable and bring it to all noise, zero data.
Irrespective of how many times it's asked, paper applicants won't know why they got that update and someone else didn't get it.
