I have to say that I'm in shock. I was expecting a much longer wait and can only assume we got lucky with the IO assigned to our file.
There was a significant problem with our file. My husband worked in Kuwait for a year and a half in the mid 80's. Despite months of trying, we were unable to obtain a police certificate from Kuwait. Everyone we approached told us there was nothing to provide since all police records pre-1989 were destroyed in the war. We wrote a letter explaining the situation and it looks like they accepted this. On top of that, my husband spent 15 years working in Egypt as an expat (we had the PCC for that) and had also done short (less than six month) contract jobs in Sudan, Iraq, Mongolia, Rwanda and other places that I'm forgetting right now (we reported all of these jobs on the application). Based on this, I was sure we were in for background check hell. (Having said that, many of these roles were US government contracts that required security clearance so maybe this helped?)
Waiting was horrible and stressful and we didn't even have to wait that long. I hope processing goes quickly for everyone else who is waiting.
My husband is currently in Canada and is going to travel down to Buffalo to obtain his visa in person next Tuesday (and then head back and land). I will report back on how that goes. I know several others here have done it.