12 months could be an answer when you've just mailed your application..at the beginning everything is vague, there are many unknowns such as how long the BG check will take, or if the system randomly generates an RQ or an FP request might come up, additional documents maybe needed when they review your application, the applicants turnaround time for any inquiries from the IRCC officer has an impact on the overall processing time as well.
But when you are already in Decision made - many of the unknowns have been eliminated, the application is likely sitting in some automated queu i assume and they have visibility on how long the queu is, so likely they could be come up with a more accurate estimate - say with a +/- 1 month margin of error (like...say 4 months (which could mean 3 ,4 or 5 months), not anytime between January and October!!),
That accurate estimate is only what we need, and i'm sure they have visibility into that information...and with a little bit of improvement/investment in ECAS, it could be made visible to us too
. That would save them tons of incoming phone calls, and save us months of frustration
.
Anyway, just my thoughts...but who am i?!