My guess is that they just decided to really stick with the 12-month processing time guide line.
Last year, the processing time for a lot of applicants was around 10 months or so, but now that they started EE, and inevitably prioritizing the EE applications, they are probably processing all the old CEC applications with the 12-month processing time in mind.
Let's see what happens towards July, and see if we'll see any activities. It's still the beginning of May. The progress is slow with no MRs issued to people here for the last three weeks, but at the same time, we haven't heard of anyone rejected either. So my take on this is, just wait and see what happens around July.