I also applied outland through the Sydney office, but our SA letter said this:
"You have met the requirements for eligibility as a sponsor. Accordingly, the Application for Permanent Residence for your relative(s) has been retained for further processing at CPC Mississauga."
We went from AOR to SA in 2 days, and then I received an email from the Sydney visa office on the same day as receiving SA that says:
"Your application for admission to Canada as a Permanent Resident may now be ready to be finalised, conditional to a final admissibility review by the immigration officer.
Your Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR) Form(s) will be valid for your initial entry to Canada until 08/28/2015 (mm/dd/yy).
So that your permanent resident visa(s) can be issued, please submit the documents listed below:"
The documents requested are passport, updated appendix B and two immigration photos, all of which I mailed off a couple of days ago. The letter gave me two options for sending the requested information: If I was living in Canada and would be for the next three months, I could send it to CPC Ottawa. If I was living in Sydney, I could send it to the Consulate General of Canada in Sydney. I chose to follow the instructions for people currently living in Canada, which means that the information was sent to Ottawa. I'm not sure what this means in terms of processing times for my application, but considering how quickly I got to PPR I hope it means I don't have to wait through the 11-month processing time currently listed for Sydney.
FWIW, I think our application was very straightforward and I provided heaps and heaps of relationship proof. My sponsor and I have been together for four years, we have no kids, and my sponsor is on a good salary (although work is contract based and we had to provide a separate sheet to list all of his employers over the last 5 years).
My application was received by CIC on October 10th, so that "working on application received October 5th" processing time doesn't appear to be accurate.
