Our time line till now -
Application made on : November 26, 2012
Received : November 28, 2012
Sponsorship Approval : February 24, 2013
PPR : March 9, 2013 (My wife replied to the email saying that she was in Canada on visitor visa and will be back in third week of April 2013)
Passport submitted : April 24, 2013
No contact from CIC after that. At this point, I will add that towards the end of March 2013, my mother-in-law (alternative phone number on application) got a call from CIC asking for my wife. The lady from CIC told that they needed the passport submitted ASAP. MIL told that she was in Canada and would be back in 3rd week of April and information has already been conveyed by her via reply to CIC's email. The CIC lady kept the phone down without saying anything else.
My deductions till now :
1) CIC operates in "silos" - Inter-department communication is poor. Hence, the department tracking emails probably hasn't conveyed proper information ahead to another department that is responsible for phone follow ups.
2) CIC made a spurt of PPR requests sometime around 9th March 2013. Based on many entries in the google spreadsheet, I can see that many different applications received on different dates have had PPRs sent out on 9th March - 4 in total currently (compared to something like only 1 sent on 8th March). Of the four PPRs listed, we have atleast 3 confirmed completed applications. (green shade)
3) Applicants who applied as far up as 25th December have completed applications. Contrast that to many others who are many months behind that figure even though, potentially, they have equally good applications / proofs.
Our case most closely resembles "jainanchal's" case. Same application date, sponsorship date, PPR date etc. I congratulate her on her completed application and visa.
Let's see how things pan out for us. Waiting......