OTTAWA Case Pilot Office - for 2007 London Applicants only

[edupolo]

Hello,

I have recently received my document request letter and was notified that my case was part of a small group of applications to be handled by the offices in Ottawa instead of the London High Commission.

I would like to hear from others like me, who are preparing their documents, applied in London in 2007 and their case is being handled by Ottawa to be able to share questions.

Hope to hear from all of you (I wonder how small the group of cases sent to Ottawa really is)

 

[M+JM]

Hey
Just replied in a similar thread. Applied in Sept 07, got the same CPPO request on 27 FEB so our situations are identical.
Sent all docs on 30 March (could have done better but British police clearance is a JOKE compared to French one...).
Too early to get an AOR i suppose... The letter said they would communicate via email so maybe this will speed things up a little?
NOC is 4141. From the look of this forum there don't seem to be so many of us in this so-called "small group"... No is that a good thing (what can be worse than London) or a bad thing ("Pilot" implies new...not experienced...meetings and reporting and red tape...).
Plus they will have to work with London, which could delay things. For instance two weeks later we received another, identical letter from London, only with a different "OTT number". WTH?! We ignored that and used the first letter as our cover letter, hoping that an earlier start date for the "120" days might be better...

Any idea of timeline? I must say when we received that and read "120 days" we began planning for a September-October move... But ther's no guarantee a decision will be made within 120 days is there? Let's show a little faith... GO OTTAWA! I promise if they work well I'll support the Senators!

Anyway hope to hear from other people as well. Will let you know if we get anything!

 

[ahmadtajwer]

Hey Edupolo, good that you have started this new thread coz i was thinking to start it. Ya as you know that i am one of them as well.
As per my knowledge and info., all those applicants who have received their update letters in Late Feb and in March have got the same letters to send theirs docs to Ottawa. By looks of it, it should be quicker probably like CHC ND. One of the experiences that i had was i sent them case specific query on their email add (provided on letter) and got response within half an hour which is rather unusual. But again it's Pilot Processing Office.
The only confusion here is which checklist to be followed? I suppose as they haven't got any new instructions on website or anywhere so i'll be following London office visa specific instructions.

 

[M+JM]

I know, like is it 2 or 4 photos etc... We just went for safer and sent anything that was in one of the checklists even if the other didn't ask for it. We had a question and we emailed them as well, and got a same day reply- pretty unusual as you say!
We thought this new pilot unit had just been created (so hopefully if they're supposed to take some load off London's hands they have no backlog) so we tried to beat the crowd by sending our stuff ASAP. Hope it works!

 

[ahmadtajwer]

hi MJM, ya thats right and other thing was notarising the docs, did u notarise ur employment contracts and educational certs.? ifmsomfrom where and how much. it is good that u have sent ur bundle and i think edupolo has sent his as well not sure though. i ll be sending mine in a week's time. do update us if u hear anything from them as they are suppose to tell u the expected timelines as per letter.

 

[youskal]

Dears,

I have started the following thread http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/case-processing-pilot-ottawa-small-group-selected-t38978.0.html yesterday, but since edupolo started the thread on 16 march, I will neglect my thread and post here.

To be honest I'm not London CHC, I'm a 2006 Damascus CHC.

The reason for starting my thread was to answer the following:


* Is this procedure being performed only for LONDON CHC? and in specific 2007 applicants, or there are other CHC (like hopefully Damascus) included in this process
* What is the selection criteria: Is it Job experience related (Like for EXAMPLE: selecting those whom are OLD Applicants but their JOB Experience match "38 Occupation List", or selecting ppl with specific NOC.) or AOR related (Like for EXAMPLE all that applied during 2007 till feb 2008)

Thank you for your contribution in helping us analyze this.

Youskal

 

[M+JM]

We just went to our local sollicitors, asked a couple how much they would charge and we ended up paying £35 per person. Of course when we asked them we said "documents", but we brought them LOTS of documents - in fact we got absolutely everything notarised.
We went for over cautious because of the 2 checklists confusion, plus we don't want to spend more time when we find out we need additional docs.
One checklist said payslips? We sent notarised copies of every single payslip we have, in addition to contracts, letters of end of employment etc! Same for education certificates etc, everything which was not an original was notarised (police clearance and birth certifs are the only originals they insist on having if I remember correctly) . Should have seen the sollicitor's face when he saw the bundle!!. But he did them all so credit to him.
Ask around! make his/her job a little easier by having 2 piles of docs (copies/originals) put in the same order which you can go through together quickly. A little prep saves a lot of time, plus it's a good opportunity to check you've got all your documents!
The documents in total hardly fit in an A4 envelope, that's to show you how much there was. Well they asked for evidence, they've got plenty of evidence now!

Of course we'll let you know if we hear from them. To be honest (being naturally optimistic) we would expect an AOR soon, hopefully via e-mail since the letter said they'd make heavy use of it, so it could be this week? E-mails would save us (and them) a LOT of hassle so I think we have a good reason to be hopeful here... We'll let you in on the "timeline" they mentionned in the letter, that would be very interesting.
Good luck with your docs. Contact your sollicitor now, get an appointment, sort out your copies, leave everything with them if the appointment isn't enough time (wasn't for us!) and come back the next day! I would say be wise and send it ASAP, be one of the first they receive.

Youskal: as mentionned in your other thread, we're Sept 2007 London, NOC 4141 which is not in the 38. My guess would have been that they would create other similar Pilots, the quick-working offices taking over some of the slow-working offices backlog, but no one's heard of similar cases outside the Ottawa one?

 

[M+JM]

(sorry about the double post, just hate it when it gets to the bottom and you can't read as you type..)

Got curious about the apparently isolated case of this new pilot thing, so I'm just trying to find out more. Stumbled on this by googling Case Processing Pilot Ottawa:
I can't post links, so try googling CIC news case processing pilot Ottawa and check out this news release from the CIC.gc.ca website...

However it says it's in Sydney? News was dated September 2008, and it says they'll review their work after 18 months. Wait... That would be...NOW! Let's just hope all these evaluations and meetings and reports and improvement plans won't slow the processing too much...

 

[ahmadtajwer]

thanks mjm for ur detailed response. youska sorry i didnt know that u r Demascus applicant thats why i asked u to use the same thread. aologies. as mjm my noc is also doesnt come under list of 38.

 

[M+JM]

Good news...or bad?

Just received the following email from CPP-O: they acknowledge (13th April) receipt of my documents posted from the UK on March 30th.
I'm skipping some useless info, the "interesting" info is in bold:

As part of the Government of Canada’s Action Plan for Faster Immigration, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is working to reduce this inventory of Federal Skilled Worker applications. Your application is part of a small group of files that has been transferred to the Case Processing Pilot-Ottawa (“CPP-O”) office to speed up processing of your application.

Applications for permanent residence in Canada in the category that you have applied to require on average 10 months to process at this office. If you have not received any instructions from this office by February 7, 2011, you are requested to contact this office directly.

You should be aware that there may be additional delay in the processing of your application for permanent residence in Canada, since neither you nor any of your accompanying family members are normally resident in the area of responsibility of this office. This delay may result from the need to refer your case to the Canadian Immigration office which is responsible for the country in which you or your family members normally reside. This referral is necessary to verify any information that you have provided with your application, or for advice concerning qualifications or other matters of a local concern that should be taken into account when assessing your application.
Prepare yourself for immigration to Canada
Your application has just been received at this office and some months will probably pass before you know the final decision on your application. We encourage you to use these months to gather information on Canada.


Apart from that they only mention that they will use email as default mode of communication, that I should advise them if my circumstances change, and at the end they advise me to look up job licencing etc.

So... good news for some maybe, but to us it's a huge let down. 10 months, plus delays because the office is not normally in charge of our area of residence? How is that "faster" than the normal London route???
I'm also puzzled by the processing times. Do they mean visa in 10 months, or next stage in 10 months? I would have imagined visa, but what of the "if you haven't heard anything by Feb 2011"?? And also "some months will probably pass before you get a final answer"?? That means an answer in a few months, then medical, and application finalised in 10, right?

Anyway I'll let you ponder that...
Hope this is good news for some. Feel free to share on other threads.

M+JM

 

[ahmadtajwer]

Hi M+JM,

What a let down mate, that looks like a rubbish email.... I hope it's the genric email and hope that they process lot faster than what they have mentioned. By looks of it, we are probably not the lucky ones but otherwise :-\

Anyways lets still hope for good and wait for couple of months and see what happens !!

9 months time that they have mentioned is for processing to next stage not to visa issuance as per my understanding !!! But i think we have to wait and see. I hope i'm wrong in my analysis.

 

[edupolo]

Hello,
sorry about delay in writing, but work is keeping me really busy lately.
I have not sent my documents yet. I am hoping to do that in 2 weeks or so. Unfortunately, I need to get police certificates from three different countries, so gathering them all isnt easy. I spoke to a notary public and he said that the charges are GBP 50.00 for first doc and GBP 20.00 thereafter. Since I have loads of documents to notarise, I am waiting for a per hour quote. Could you comment on this rates?

Anyway, I really wish I had not read the email you posted from the Ottawa pilot. It is not clear at all I must say, but I agree that it sound that they may not even go to the next step untiil 07 February 2011 which is kind of ridiculous. This is so frustrating!!!

Please keep sharing.

 

[ahmadtajwer]

you can get per hour quotes from different notaries, i spoke to someone today who agreed on £140 per hour but i have lost the contact.

check out www.thenotariessociety.org.uk and see if you can find anything useful there.

I agree with you that email doesn't look very good and it's rather disappointing !!!

 

[M+JM]

Only good news is that it'll give the pound even more time to recover... (trying to be positive)

It does feel like we're back to square one: 10 months would be great if we hadn't been waiting for 3, 4, 5 years or more. If really sounds like we're starting anew, new application forms (what happened to the ones we sent years ago?) etc.
I can only hope that they do know that, and that they will prioritise us? They do repeat that it's supposed to be faster this way, but 10 months plus what we've waited is about on par with London times, so I realy hope this was only a generic email.
We'll be sure to let you know. Best of luck.

For your question edupolo, try different solicitors, try Scotland, ask a per hour rate or something. Our 15 min appointment was enough to do all our docs (about 30-40) except the payslips. £20 per doc is exploitation, ask someone else, send the docs off if you need to.
Best of luck to you.

 

[ahmadtajwer]

On a positive note, i am thinking that this is first time that they have got few applications so they are not busy at the moment but might still be sending standard replies to everyone. No information available on internet about them, the only pilot project's info that is available is of Pilot Processing office of Sydney-Nova Scotia. So we should hope of best.