MistahFixIt said:
Can I ask why you chose to file an Outland, since you're both in Canada? Seems a bit... counter-intuitive.
There are several reasons why people choose to do it this way:
(1) It can often be faster. Outland times have increased and inland times decreased, but some outland offices can have the applicant landed as a PR in less time than it takes CPC-V to give AIP.
(2) There are IAD appeal rights for outland applicants that inland applicants do not have. Anyone can go to Federal Court, but only outland applicants can obtain an IAD appeal of a refusal.
(3) Inland applications become abandoned if the applicant ceases to live with the sponsor in Canada. Outland applications do not require the sponsor and applicant be living together, let alone in any specific location, during the application process. Thus applicants who need to travel outside Canada are safer when they use the outland office for processing.
I'm sure there are others, but those seem to be the most common. I chose to apply via the Outland route even though I'd been living in Canada for several years at that point: my job requires travel outside Canada and at the time, the Outland US processing time was substantially less than the Inland Canada processing time. In hindsight, I think my processing time would have been the same regardless of which process I'd pursued.
