I must disagree here, the federal gov’t is responsible for citizenship grant and having passed bill C-16, which reduced the physical presence requirement to be in Canada before applying for citizenship. The honourable minister of immigration along with his technocrats should have anticipated the subsequent significant increase in citizenship applications and put in place measures to mitigate the current backlog being experienced esp. in the GTA and other heavily populated regions.
Some of the steps they could have taken include hiring more administrative staff and judges, increase the frequency of testing and oath ceremonies utilizing weekends if necessary.
This whole situation is unacceptable and could have been prevented and is made worse because in the next three months a federal election is due, that a lot of applicants won't be eligible to participate in. Not because their applications are non-standard or wasn't submitted in time to be processed, but simply because they happen to reside in the most populous regions of the country.