Outside sponsorship is now 41 months
I caution anyone reading this that although it's really very bad (and shame, shame, shame on the Quebec government), we do not know exactly what the 41 months means or esp how [exactly] it's calculated.
All we can really say right now is that these numbers changing to the higher side in a relatively short period of time is that a lot of files are basically stuck, and very few are actually progressing (and possibly for whatever reason some much older files got approved recently). That number - 41 months - could change dramatically, either way, even to shorter side IF (and likely only if) Quebec unplugged the backlog by dropping this (horrible, awful, terrible) quota limitation. Or possibly in near term -
but only temporarily - if they are applying the quota limitation on a calendar basis and approved a bunch in January.
Usually what IRCC does is look at date-of-application of recently approved files and the number of files approved during that week (we think) take the most recent week where 80% or more of files were approved (80% being their number for 'most' applications, as seemingly they assume 20% of all files are reliably complex or problematic.)
For example: they look at the files they approved in the last month (or whatever period since they last updated the published number), and group them into weekly buckets. And then they 'throw out' the ones that still have approved files less than 80% - they haven't passed the 'most' bar yet. And they take the most recent week that's over 80% approved and that's the week count they use to publish this 'expected processing time' number.
So how can it possibly jump from 12 months to 18 to 24 to 41 in a short period of time (eg less than the 17 months difference between 24 and 41)? It is VERY unlikely this could happen randomly in a period where they have a normal number of files being approved. Therefore:
There's only one answer that to me is consistent with what we know: VERY FEW files have been approved in the last while, and most of the ones that have are either still below 80% approval and/or they've approved a few that were really old (possible they've got some policy in place to only approve really old ones or are approving a few based on some 'hand-rolled' reasons, like interventions at political level).
On the bad side (apart from this being a really stupid and unfair policy): the number will stay high and bounce around in scary ways until the policy changes.
The one small bit of positive news: this number CAN drop a lot, in a very short period of time, IF and WHEN the quota system is dropped. So those who are waiting and worried: this does not mean that you WILL have to wait three and a half years or more. It means the system is bad and stupid and you MIGHT have to wait until you get lucky, find someway to make enough noise to pressure your MPP/minister in the Quebec government (note: NOT the federal government), or until this very bad and stupid policy is changed at the Quebec government level.
Repeating the point a bit differently: When the policy is changed, that number could fall really quickly, dramatically so, esp if I'm right that the federal government/IRCC has the files ready to go and would be happy to issue passport requests for many of them as soon as they get the go-ahead).
Also if Quebec's quota thing is annual, it might drop a lot in January/February, but only for a while - until that annual quota is used up. That will be nice for some but no better, really, for anyone with a recent application.