Your visa application will be processed by the Government of Canada, who makes all decisions regarding your visa application. VFS Global and its staff do not play any part in or influence the outcome of your visa application.
I've been thinking about this more and the thing I don't understand is why the Moscow/Russian VFS offices are not open
for Canadian files.
I mean, it's not driven by the Russian coronavirus restrictions - the same offices are handling visa apps and the like for other countries and embassies. The only guess I have of substance - apart from some banal idiocy like not wanting to pay for it, which doesn't make a lot of sense, because VFS is surely compensated out of the fees - is that Canada's decided that because of the (still fairly severe) travel restrictions, the volume of Russian-locatd apps and files doesn't make sense.(Compare to Warsaw where the intra-EU travel is much less restricted and there are direct flights to Canada, I think).
Which brings me to my pure-speculation guess, that Warsaw may (repeat may) be prioritising files acc to which countries have VFS offices open and functioning. This might explain why there has been movement on some other country's files (Belarus, Baltics, Ukraine) that are nominally linked to the Warsaw VFS office, but not for Russian ones.
Yes, I know this doesn't make a lot of sense, because for example, for those files that already have biometrics and medicals, there is no need for public opening of the Moscow VFS office, it can be done by mail (or sent to Warsaw VFS office or anywhere in the world really). And there are a lot of other objections to why this should have no relation to processing of files at least at certain stages.
So I understand the objections to my speculative theory, but I also have some experience with bureaucracies, and sometimes they have weird logic loops esp when limited staff and other constraints. Something like "we have to prioritise some files, Russia has limited travel, therefore Moscow VFS not open, therefore all Moscow files on hold (except exceptional/urgent)." It doesn't make a lot of sense because we all know it is possible to get on flights outside of Russia and to Canada, i.e. it's faulty logic, but faulty simple logic sometimes wins over correct and more complex logic.
As I said I was on this videoconference thing where people were asking questions and there were a lot of people asking about (say) student visas and the answers were almost always 'since the universities are all doing distance learning we are not processing those, you don't need a visa to do online classes.' There were a lot of logical gaps, like people wondering how they could risk paying canadian tuition when they have no guarantee they'll get a visa in future, i.e. they could lose all the money; the answer was not encouraging, basically 'that probably won't happen but it could.'
Not that any of my speculation makes a difference for our spousal files right now, all we can do is wait. But I think the VFS office opening might actually be an important step for spousal files too.
