Yes, Tim50, it is standard. My advice is get it done asap, don't think too much about it. Look at the list that comes with the letter, chose a provider, get it done. I did mine the day after the letter arrived, minimum to no impact on my process.
If you look through the forum, you'll find several people with several theories on why they request fingerprints. I don't think there's one single reason, each case is different. The same goes for residence questionnaire. It's useless to try to understand the innards of the process without input from an official source - which none of us have. Whatever it is they are doing in the IRCC, it seems to be working, because processes have been getting faster - at least according to the data on the spreadsheets.