Read the tweet this increase was specifically for outland spousal applicants. Stand by my thoughts that economic immigration processing or applications that will affect the economy will receive a lot of extra resources because without the economy bouncing back everyone in Canada will suffer more. There are plenty of family sponsorship that doesn't impact the labour market. Family sponsorship doesn't prioritize high skilled or needed skills. Assume that faster processing for targeted industries is one of the ways forward.
I understand your point of view, although I don't agree with all of it (and do agree with some of it).
My points are/were that a) assuming family sponsorship has no positive economic impact is wrong (PGP aside), and because arrivals are constrained due to covid rules, outland applicants is one area they can focus on increasing at present. So 'applications that affect the economy' - when arrivals for non-family are limited - may mean focussing on what they can do.
And the article hinted at another: that pandemic may be causing a re-think (esp for those already in-Canada) about how effective the prioritization of "high skilled and needed skills" has been. As he also notes, the environment in terms of where (global) immigrants want to go is also changing.
That said, I don't know for sure either, and Saunders' article may not reflect actual departmental thinking (I suspect it does to some degree and he has contacts) - and of course what comes out of the policy meatgrinder will be affected by politics and the real world of how long covid restrictions stay in place.
The announcement could, of course, just be a short-term measure to deal with a backlog. Personally I doubt it, the up-front costs and frictions of hiring, training, etc are such that I don't think they'd add so many people just for that - but I don't know.
If I'm right, however, the idea behind it would be to speed up/increase capacity for family reunification.
