Who told you that your background check is in process? The reason the background check is stuck is not due to police or RCMP's laziness, they sent the results in as little as 2 days (they did mine), but the immigration officers are lazy enough to even open the envelop and acknowledge its receipt. I don't think they ask your home country for clearance without your knowledge. if they need it, they will ask you to bring security clearance letter from your home country or any other country you spent more than 6 months at. But I haven't never heard anyone being asked that for citizenship (they do for PR). The CIC call center agent, I think, only sees what you see in ECAS with a little detail. The actual officer that works on your file is the one who has all the answers. So don't take CIC call center agent's words very seriously...lol They tell everyone that your file is in the normal processing range, before the 12 months is up. Once the 12month is up, then they will say every case is different so is the processing time.