What is your wife’s status in Canada? Have you applied for spousal sponsorship. A breast reduction is not really considered a medical emergency. Does she actually have a scheduled surgery date? Does she have any family in Canada?
The office has essentially told them they are in line for CSQ and are waiting their turn to receive it. The whole system is full of people in queues waiting. Not sure what a lawyer would do about this. For Quebec this is not a highly abnormal professing time.
You do need to show significantly abnormal processing times for writ of mandamus. People should definitely consult a lawyer but some lawyers will be happy to take your money when chances of writ of mandamus so early are not great.
The article is making a lot of assumptions based on the first 6 months of data. Yes there is some flexibility in the targets but don’t think the government wants to go significantly over the 395k for political and economic reasons. In general approvals tend to slow down at the end of the year...
Very few people apply since they assume they will be refused. It has also become much harder to get a TRV approved in general. All you can do is submit your strongest application and hope for the best but have realistic expectations. Applying won’t hurt their PR application.