Ha, no, I'm not a case officer. And I'm not offended.
Just taking the contrary view: this part of what IRCC is doing is not 'intelligence', artificial or otherwise. It's flowcharts or algorithms, designed by humans, where putting the wrong input at the wrong time (or the right input at the wrong time) causes problems because it's not designed for it. They didn't design it for people not following the instructions.
You can get mad, or annoyed that it's not compensating well. Or you can rant that it should be better, or (like me) get mildly annoyed that it doesn't have better error-handlign capacity - it's just a fragile algorithm where it doesnt' need to be (and my friend would say it has not been properly tested, because he's into testing products and programs). All of those positions might be 'right' - but that doesn't help much.
Or you can ... follow the instructions. As you noted - and I'm just putting it differently - it is a literal waste of time and sometimes money to do upfront medical. Very often with IRCC the answer actually is - follow the instructions.
And by following instructions....do people get results? Hmmm...in the past 5-6 months, i dont recall that happening from what we've read on this forum.
In cases where CIC asks you to PAY for the application and the biometric. And later even when applicants have paid, they get a letter to PAY FOR IT again! And to make it complicated, CIC writes, that it will not request again and failure to providing the payment could result in refusal. Some who are challenging the system, provide a scanned copy of the receipt. I read some applicants who go confused and paid again, only to here from some VIP members, saying yes CIC will refund you....eventually......not sure if they got their refunds yet. So following the instruction doesn't help.
Earlier this year, there was an announcement of Family Reunification program whereby Spousal PR applicants, would be able to enter Canada through TRV and then complete the processing of their PR application while staying with their family. I recall you have noted your reservations about it. But using your logic of following instructions and guidelines, even then CIC is not consistent about delivering TRVs to spousal applicants. Infact officers are clearly refusing majority of applications. I have personally taken up this issue through MP and we have made some starling discovery -
CIC Case officers (in VOs like Abu Dhabi) ARE NOT AWARE OF MAY 26TH FAMILY REUNIFICATION - and hence refusing applications. There's a lot going on and I can't and soon people will learn about it. But it happened at the expense of someone's time and money. I wish more people had raised concern and spoken to their MPs.
There are lots of inconsistencies within CIC.
Defending failures of CIC is not helpful - atleast for immigrants. We need to highlight repetitive inconsistencies and discuss it to solve the issue. Not put it under the carpet. As per the findings of auditor general, CIC is riddled with chaotic processing of applications and in some cases they have found processing wait times to be different based on racial and origin of applicants. (
https://www.cicnews.com/2023/10/breaking-canadas-auditor-general-releases-a-report-on-irccs-permanent-residence-backlogs-1040410.html#gs.18spaw)
To sum up, we started this conversation about upfront medicals. First of all - its on the CIC website, an option given by CiC that you can ask for upfront medicals. So its not-an-out-of-this-world thing for CIC. In a normal world, its absolutely phenomenal if a person delivers everything at the very start. Officers do not have to waste time in requesting medicals and biometrics. Everything is there, just process it. Since there is incompetence and that's why inconsistencies in CIC, hence case officers delay things when they find it even slightly different from the norm.
