u/Primary-Coffee5423

Long post so buckle up…

This week’s spreadsheet news is absolutely more upbeat! We had an above average week with 28 approvals. Importantly, we had more pre-C3 approvals. There has been a lot of chatter on this platform about the increased number of applicants in front of us according to the online tracker. The prevailing theory is that the Pre-C3 folks got admitted into the mainstream queue. Obviously this is speculation because none of us truly know, but the noticeable increase in C3 approvals give some support to that theory.

Maybe the most quoted part of my post last week was the four year wait time for everyone currently in the spreadsheet. I recalculated and while it hasn’t drastically changed, there is really good reason to think it is going to speed up. So the first thing to note is that this is just a spreadsheet of self-reported data which has all kinds of bias and human error. Secondly, processes change all the time. That could apply to the IRCC at some point. So the current rate of approval isn’t necessarily connected to future rates of approval. It’s just a snapshot in time with the data that we have.

As the weeks go by, I have been tallying the approvals on Sunday. So that means I missed approvals that got added in previous weeks that had already passed because I didn’t go back in time to re-tally once the week was over. Today I decided to go back and recalculate. I’m happy to report that many people who gained approval weeks ago have added their data to the spreadsheet. So my running average of about 20 approvals per week is an underestimate. And the average number of approvals will continue to increase as long as more people who got approved to come back to add to the spreadsheet. It seems there are people in our community who go back and add their information weeks later. This is good! We need as much data as possible.

It may not be a bad idea to go on other social media platforms to find groups dealing with C3 and encourage them to get on the spreadsheet. We especially need people who have already been approved. That’s tricky because it’s easy to see why approval would demotivate people to update the spreadsheet. I plan on updating it when I get my approval, however, I may not do the Sunday optimism posts anymore. I can easily see how that would demotivate me from act actively keeping on top of things. So it might be the same sort of psychological demotivation with folks who get approved. It doesn’t hurt to remind everyone to go back and add or update if they haven’t done so in a while.

That said, I have some updated numbers. Keep in mind, the averages are complicated because it seems the IRCC has been working at different clips over different weeks. I calculated each week starting on Monday. These calculations exclude approvals before C3 was passed because there were so few. The average number of approvals since the first Monday in December is 19.5 per week. The average since January is 22.3 per week. The average since February is 25.7 per week. The average since March is 27.1 per week. There is a dip in the average since April at 23.3 per week. That month, we hit quite a few slow weeks. And so far in May, we have 25 per week. Probably the best aggregated average is since February 9. I picked that Monday because the previous week had single digit approvals. Every week since then has been double digit and seems to be more normalized. The number since that outlier is 27.3 per week. So I think that’s a much more accurate number. And the kicker is, it will keep increasing as more people add their information.

I hope this helps us all be a little more hopeful!

Hello fellow Canadians! There were only three more approvals this week compared to last week, but it means things are still moving. Importantly, out of the 18 that were approved this week, 10 of them were for urgent Pre-C3 apps. Congratulations to those folks. Hopefully that means more of the urgent applications from 2025 are going to start moving through.

It was a big week for new applications. I wondered if maybe we had hit a peak, but I don’t think we have yet.

I think our spreadsheet is probably fairly representative of those who are applying in general. We might skew a little more motivated because we self-selected to go to Reddit and share information. I think we are also heavily skewed towards those who are applying for urgent processing because those folks are probably the most motivated. But statistically speaking, if this is the rate of acceptance that we are seeing in the group, I imagine it’s approximately the rate of acceptance for everyone who is applying.

I’m a statistician. We typically like working with large samples because it means we can assume normality even if a sample isn’t fully representative of the population. We’ve got a sample of 4000 people now. In almost all survey data research, that is a good enough size sample to make some basic assumptions. My take is that the timelines given by the IRCC are most likely not going to be close to correct. Our spreadsheet has about 4200 people and around 400 have been approved. That leaves about 3800 in our spreadsheet waiting for approval. Approval rates have been about 20 per week the last few months. That means that on average, everyone currently in the spreadsheet will be approved within four years. But of course we have to account for the fact that there will be new urgent cases that will push that timeline back. And that’s just kind of how it is. I know that part doesn’t sound optimistic, but the optimism in this process still remains: we now have an opportunity for citizenship that we didn’t have before. I’m thankful for that.

And happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in our group!

I started to see these in my field. They look interesting, but I noticed that they are only posted for about a month and very late in season. Opening dates for applications in March and even April with closing dates in early May. Jobs need to be filled by July 1. Are these more likely internal hires? With only a month to apply it seems like they wouldn’t get a great pool so late in the season.

OK, I’ll start by saying there’s less to be optimistic about this week. We had 15 approvals, which is half of what we had last week. At least one pre-C3 application got through after over a year in processing.

I would like to think that maybe the IRCC is doing some kind of big training thing this week because they have hired new people and need to onboard a bunch of agents to help get through the ever-growing mass of applications arriving each day. I know that’s likely not the case, but that’s how I choose to be optimistic.

Okay, let’s beam positive energy to the agents up north. Here’s to hoping they all have an extra cup of coffee this week!

While the week started slow, we ended up with 30 approvals. That’s a 50% increase from last week, which doubled the previous week. Importantly, six of our pre-C3 friends made it out with an approval this week.

I am currently in processing with a request for urgent processing. I did a little work with spreadsheet data and it looks like amongst those who applied urgent, at least 50% have been approved for applications that went into processing between 1/26 and 3/22. So that’s kind of where the timeline is right now. Of those that have been approved, the average days to approval (once in processing) have been increasing a bit - likely due to the sharp increase in apps.

Hopefully this is helpful to some of you. Let’s cheer on the IRCC agents this week, and as always, let’s hope they have an extra cup of coffee!