Breaking down application processing time...

[S_and_C]

Hi everyone,

As far as I've seen, it seems like getting the first AOR of a permanent residence application received at CPC Mississauga is on average ~20 calendar days. I am curious to know about the logistics, volume and resources involved in application intake as well as the eventual processing throughout an application's lifecycle.

Firstly, according to the site page for the Mississauga office (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/offices/canada/mississauga.asp) there are a cluster of buildings each receiving different types of family class applications, along with a single address for courier drop-offs.

So my questions are...
1. How many applications are received at the CPC in a day?
2. Is there a lag time for applications received by courier to be forwarded to the building for a particular stream?
3. How many resources are available for opening and logging the applications?
4. How long does it take for a person to open an application, organize the contents, enter it into the "system", assign it a UCI number etc before it is added to the pool of "ready to proceed with the sponsor approval step"?

Given that the current SA average is 43 days as mentioned on the CIC site, half of this time it is sitting somewhere waiting to be opened. Then once AOR is issued, the SA comes ~23 days later.

Once SA is received and the package is sent to the VO for applicant processing, this is the largest chunk of time which could go on for months and varies wildly based on the VO. The main factor of processing time likely being volume and resources available at a given VO, assuming they are all following the same rules and processes as everyone else...

5. If an application is "complete", I am curious why it would take so long to do "background checks"? Are they spending all that time checking to see if the Police Certificate and Medical Certificate are "authentic"? It seems to me that this information should already be at their fingertips and shouldn't take too long to verify. As for proof of relationship, it can take time to go through everything, but I would expect that if there is a certain volume of relationship proof, wouldn't it be easy to conclude the relationship looks genuine?
6. Do they pass the package around to different people in the department until everyone checks each of the ticky boxes on their checklist, and finally approving the application? So is an application spending 90% of its time sitting on a shelf somewhere without anyone actually looking at it?

Thanks in advance for any insights you can provide.
S_and_C

 

[CDNPR2014]

Hi everyone,

As far as I've seen, it seems like getting the first AOR of a permanent residence application received at CPC Mississauga is on average ~20 calendar days. I am curious to know about the logistics, volume and resources involved in application intake as well as the eventual processing throughout an application's lifecycle.

Firstly, according to the site page for the Mississauga office (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/offices/canada/mississauga.asp) there are a cluster of buildings each receiving different types of family class applications, along with a single address for courier drop-offs.

So my questions are...
1. How many applications are received at the CPC in a day?
2. Is there a lag time for applications received by courier to be forwarded to the building for a particular stream?
3. How many resources are available for opening and logging the applications?
4. How long does it take for a person to open an application, organize the contents, enter it into the "system", assign it a UCI number etc before it is added to the pool of "ready to proceed with the sponsor approval step"?

5. If an application is "complete", I am curious why it would take so long to do "background checks"? Are they spending all that time checking to see if the Police Certificate and Medical Certificate are "authentic"? It seems to me that this information should already be at their fingertips and shouldn't take too long to verify. As for proof of relationship, it can take time to go through everything, but I would expect that if there is a certain volume of relationship proof, wouldn't it be easy to conclude the relationship looks genuine?
6. Do they pass the package around to different people in the department until everyone checks each of the ticky boxes on their checklist, and finally approving the application? So is an application spending 90% of its time sitting on a shelf somewhere without anyone actually looking at it?

Thanks in advance for any insights you can provide.
S_and_C

1-4 - i would imagine these questions are impossible to answer unless someone actually worked in these specific offices in CIC. These are not usually statistics that are shared by the government. Every day is different, and i am sure there are times where things are faster and slower depending on the day, week, month, etc.

5. remember that CIC has to confirm specific details from the applicant's country of citizenship, so how long background checks take is dependant on how long it takes for those countries to respond to requests. Secuirty and Background are different. While we give them information about our criminal history, it still needs to be confirmed and security checks are done internally. US and Canada have open sharing laws, so the information is probably as quick as pressing a button. the same can not be said for countries where Canada does not have the same type of relationship and governments are slow to respond to outside requests. it's not as easy as reading the report and saying "ok, this person has no criminal history, they are good to go."
How long it takes an officer to go through relationship proof is going to be different depending on the officer, their case loads and internal directives we are not privvy to. some can do it quickly, some can't. some applications have 100s and 1000s of pages to sift through, decide if it's relevant and scan into the system. Some applicaitons are smaller and easier to handle. think about you own job. Some customers/orders are easier than others to process, right? some take longer than others. that's just the fact of life. these are humans, not robots. it's anyone's guess what exactly happens.

6. yes, i believe there are layers of approvals that must be done before an application is finalized. i'm not sure how many layers, but i am almost 100% certain more than 1 officer reviews the application.

 

[S_and_C]

1-4 - i would imagine these questions are impossible to answer unless someone actually worked in these specific offices in CIC. These are not usually statistics that are shared by the government. Every day is different, and i am sure there are times where things are faster and slower depending on the day, week, month, etc.

Yes I suppose you're right, the answer can vary based on a number of factors. Given that they are taking steps to reduce processing times, part of that effort would be to identify the bottlenecks and optimize the slower steps. So I am sure they have internal statistics, similar to what people have attempted here by providing spreadsheets that indicate the major milestones that an application goes through. Would be nice to see the full performance statistics though.

5. remember that CIC has to confirm specific details from the applicant's country of citizenship, so how long background checks take is dependant on how long it takes for those countries to respond to requests. Secuirty and Background are different. While we give them information about our criminal history, it still needs to be confirmed and security checks are done internally. US and Canada have open sharing laws, so the information is probably as quick as pressing a button. the same can not be said for countries where Canada does not have the same type of relationship and governments are slow to respond to outside requests. it's not as easy as reading the report and saying "ok, this person has no criminal history, they are good to go."
How long it takes an officer to go through relationship proof is going to be different depending on the officer, their case loads and internal directives we are not privvy to. some can do it quickly, some can't. some applications have 100s and 1000s of pages to sift through, decide if it's relevant and scan into the system. Some applicaitons are smaller and easier to handle. think about you own job. Some customers/orders are easier than others to process, right? some take longer than others. that's just the fact of life. these are humans, not robots. it's anyone's guess what exactly happens.

6. yes, i believe there are layers of approvals that must be done before an application is finalized. i'm not sure how many layers, but i am almost 100% certain more than 1 officer reviews the application.

I wonder though if this is the main reason Canada has Visa Offices all over the world, to overcome some of these bottlenecks by processing the application right there in the country in question. Information doesn't have to leave the country, it stays internal, so it should be more accessible...

Thanks for the insights.

 

[CDNPR2014]

I wonder though if this is the main reason Canada has Visa Offices all over the world, to overcome some of these bottlenecks by processing the application right there in the country in question. Information doesn't have to leave the country, it stays internal, so it should be more accessible...

Thanks for the insights.

but the information is leaving the country when a Canadian embassy requests it. I think technically, Canadian embassies are considered Canadian soil, and the request is coming from Canada, not the country the embassy happens to be housed in. Another country does not have to comply with requests in the manner Canada hopes they would. They have their own rules and policies to follow.

There are for sure many other factors that cause this, some we may never know of.

 

[nmclean]

Hi everyone,

As far as I've seen, it seems like getting the first AOR of a permanent residence application received at CPC Mississauga is on average ~20 calendar days. I am curious to know about the logistics, volume and resources involved in application intake as well as the eventual processing throughout an application's lifecycle.

Firstly, according to the site page for the Mississauga office (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/offices/canada/mississauga.asp) there are a cluster of buildings each receiving different types of family class applications, along with a single address for courier drop-offs.

So my questions are...
1. How many applications are received at the CPC in a day?
2. Is there a lag time for applications received by courier to be forwarded to the building for a particular stream?
3. How many resources are available for opening and logging the applications?
4. How long does it take for a person to open an application, organize the contents, enter it into the "system", assign it a UCI number etc before it is added to the pool of "ready to proceed with the sponsor approval step"?

Given that the current SA average is 43 days as mentioned on the CIC site, half of this time it is sitting somewhere waiting to be opened. Then once AOR is issued, the SA comes ~23 days later.

I'm not sure, but I think "received" and AOR from CIC's perspective are one and the same, and they aren't necessarily tracking the initial sitting-and-waiting stage. So the 43-day SA time might represent 63 days of actual waiting.

Notice those addresses are all post office boxes, by the way. I imagine there's only one building that takes everything in, that being the courier address. Someone (R. Mahmood, namely) would pick the rest up at Canada Post Station A and Station B and bring them back to the building about 10 minutes away.

 

[S_and_C]

I'm not sure, but I think "received" and AOR from CIC's perspective are one and the same, and they aren't necessarily tracking the initial sitting-and-waiting stage. So the 43-day SA time might represent 63 days of actual waiting.

Interesting point, I hadn't considered that. I remember the SA times being quoted on the site back in 2015 being on the order of 60+ days, so really it might have been closer to 80+ days at that time. Yikes...

Notice those addresses are all post office boxes, by the way. I imagine there's only one building that takes everything in, that being the courier address. Someone (R. Mahmood, namely) would pick the rest up at Canada Post Station A and Station B and bring them back to the building about 10 minutes away.

All the postal codes are different, so it looks like a collection of buildings if you look them up on google maps. The person you mentioned wasn't the same as who signed for ours, so I presume there are few people working there receiving and sorting them, until a separate group of people do the opening/scanning/assigning UCI numbers...

 

[Mikielein]

Interesting point, I hadn't considered that. I remember the SA times being quoted on the site back in 2015 being on the order of 60+ days, so really it might have been closer to 80+ days at that time. Yikes...
All the postal codes are different, so it looks like a collection of buildings if you look them up on google maps. The person you mentioned wasn't the same as who signed for ours, so I presume there are few people working there receiving and sorting them, until a separate group of people do the opening/scanning/assigning UCI numbers...

We applied June 5 2016, we're waiting for the passport request right now

 

[Tolexmi]

Hi everyone,

As far as I've seen, it seems like getting the first AOR of a permanent residence application received at CPC Mississauga is on average ~20 calendar days. I am curious to know about the logistics, volume and resources involved in application intake as well as the eventual processing throughout an application's lifecycle.

Firstly, according to the site page for the Mississauga office (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/offices/canada/mississauga.asp) there are a cluster of buildings each receiving different types of family class applications, along with a single address for courier drop-offs.

So my questions are...
1. How many applications are received at the CPC in a day?
2. Is there a lag time for applications received by courier to be forwarded to the building for a particular stream?
3. How many resources are available for opening and logging the applications?
4. How long does it take for a person to open an application, organize the contents, enter it into the "system", assign it a UCI number etc before it is added to the pool of "ready to proceed with the sponsor approval step"?

Given that the current SA average is 43 days as mentioned on the CIC site, half of this time it is sitting somewhere waiting to be opened. Then once AOR is issued, the SA comes ~23 days later.

Once SA is received and the package is sent to the VO for applicant processing, this is the largest chunk of time which could go on for months and varies wildly based on the VO. The main factor of processing time likely being volume and resources available at a given VO, assuming they are all following the same rules and processes as everyone else...

5. If an application is "complete", I am curious why it would take so long to do "background checks"? Are they spending all that time checking to see if the Police Certificate and Medical Certificate are "authentic"? It seems to me that this information should already be at their fingertips and shouldn't take too long to verify. As for proof of relationship, it can take time to go through everything, but I would expect that if there is a certain volume of relationship proof, wouldn't it be easy to conclude the relationship looks genuine?
6. Do they pass the package around to different people in the department until everyone checks each of the ticky boxes on their checklist, and finally approving the application? So is an application spending 90% of its time sitting on a shelf somewhere without anyone actually looking at it?

Thanks in advance for any insights you can provide.
S_and_C

IF you look at CiC statistics of how people coming in at PR holders from last year , over 200,000. Am sure more than that was process, so that figure was just the ones approved. If you further divide that by 52 weeks, then u know they recieve over 3000 applications in 5 working days. thats a lot. and am sure thats why they have the procedure of applications going into queue.

If you do ur research , each application is assessed at least THRICE. One from canada, then the VO, then it is sent back to canada for final review.

 

[willyblue]

IF you look at CiC statistics of how people coming in at PR holders from last year , over 200,000. Am sure more than that was process, so that figure was just the ones approved. If you further divide that by 52 weeks, then u know they recieve over 3000 applications in 5 working days. thats a lot. and am sure thats why they have the procedure of applications going into queue.

If you do ur research , each application is assessed at least THRICE. One from canada, then the VO, then it is sent back to canada for final review.

Are you saying once CIC receives the application at the initial stage,they first access your application before sending it to the local VO

 

[nmclean]

IF you look at CiC statistics of how people coming in at PR holders from last year , over 200,000. Am sure more than that was process, so that figure was just the ones approved. If you further divide that by 52 weeks, then u know they recieve over 3000 applications in 5 working days. thats a lot. and am sure thats why they have the procedure of applications going into queue.

If you do ur research , each application is assessed at least THRICE. One from canada, then the VO, then it is sent back to canada for final review.

Divide that by about 4, because we are only looking at the Mississauga office which only takes family class applications.

 

[CDNPR2014]

Are you saying once CIC receives the application at the initial stage,they first access your application before sending it to the local VO

applicant applications are not assessed upfront while in canada. they are reviewed for completeness to make sure there aren't any outdated/missing documents or missing signatures. the actually "assessment" happens at the visa office. it certainly goes through multiple layers of assessment by different officers. i personally don't know how many.

 

[Sous02]

applicant applications are not assessed upfront while in canada. they are reviewed for completeness to make sure there aren't any outdated/missing documents or missing signatures. the actually "assessment" happens at the visa office. it certainly goes through multiple layers of assessment by different officers. i personally don't know how many.

I have seen gcms notes that showed an initial assessment of the relationship only to have it overruled at the local VO so I think there must be some sort of assessment.

 

[Sous02]

http://sterlingimmigrationltd.com/spousal-sponsorship/canada-spouse-and-common-law-partner-visa-update-june-2016/

 

[CDNPR2014]

I have seen gcms notes that showed an initial assessment of the relationship only to have it overruled at the local VO so I think there must be some sort of assessment.

i'm sure there are instances where notes are made about files before they are sent to the visa office. perhaps something sticks out while the sponsor's applicaiton is being assessed or the applicant's application is being review, and the officer makes note of it and their concerns in the file. that seems pretty plausible. this doesn't mean the details of the applicant's entire file is assessed prior to going to the visa office.

 

[Tolexmi]

when every application is received , they go thru d document checklist , just to make sure that all documents are presented. then in queue. AT the point of AOR1, an officer will go thru it again, and write a review of what he thinks , then send it to VO for in-dept detailed assessment.

I may not be able to pool together all my references, but i have done extensive research on CiC workflow, even spoken to someone who just retired working with CiC Missisaugua, and i can tell u that ...
1. Assessment starts in canada
2. 2nd assessment in VO, by local staff.
3. 3rd Assessment by a canadian Official (in VO or in Canada, can't remember) who now overrules or approves previous recommendations ( could be reject, issue visa or call for interview)