u/cj4747

A few weeks ago I offered some analysis of the monthly updates that seems to unearth IRCC's internal estimate of the number of applications it is processing per month. (link below).

This comes from the observation that in each month's updates, the "number of people ahead of you in the queue" and the "number of months left to wait" are related exactly linearly. In other words (taking the August update), the June 2026 cohort of applicants have 117,800 people ahead of them and will wait 25 months (117,800 divided by 4800 is 25), and the Jan cohort have 24,800 people ahead and will wait 24,800÷4800=5 months (rounded).

This 4,800 figure can be taken as IRCC's assumption for applications processed per month. It's the same for every "cohort" in a given monthly update, but it changes from one monthly update to the next. In the May update we had to divide each cohort's queue length by 5,925 to get the month estimates. So we can plot these monthly processing estimates over time, to get a chart like this.

https://preview.redd.it/dmdpiwoy6yjh1.png?width=953&format=png&auto=webp&s=d506b30db28b484b3c55477b1ea7104ad5c2fdbc

It seems fair to guess that IRCC is just using the previous month's processing volume in their assumptions. If so, this suggests that IRCC processed around 5,900 applications in April, falling to 4,800 applications in July. We can speculate why this might be - summer staffing issues, the ongoing impact of the retraction of certificates, etc.

This also indicates that the "number of months" estimate is very crude - it's just implied by the remaining queue size for each cohort. There's no attempt to allow for different processing speeds for urgent applications, PSU cases, etc. and to consider how this affects expected wait times for different cohorts.

This simplistic approach on the part of IRCC also explains some of the recent rises in "months remaining"; if processing times drop, the months remaining estimates rise automatically. Likewise, if IRCC had processed (say) 7,000 applications in July, the number of months estimate for the Jun cohort would have been 17, not 25.

Further, if we tie these processing numbers to the queue size, we can derive application totals (at least, those that have received AORs).

https://preview.redd.it/p3sfvy90dyjh1.png?width=343&format=png&auto=webp&s=3cdb3ebdf3a4e01026443548d5b04d68ad7bbb91

Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing. We can but hope that IRCC will find some more resources to keep a lid on queue times.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/comments/1urmcdq/queue_analysis_estimating_monthly_throughput

I've been looking at the monthly published figures for "number of people ahead of you" and "estimated time left".

My hypothesis is that the estimated time left for each 'cohort' of applicants (those who applied in a particular month) is simply

T = N / K

where

N = number of people ahead of you
K = a constant for that month's report, or 'throughput'

This hypothesis fits the published wait time estimates exactly. But the value K changes from month to month. I think IRCC is looking at how many applications they completed in the prior month, and using that value K to compute wait times. So if we derive K, we can see how throughput has varied.

For example, in the recent July report, if you assume K=5320, then

July 2026 applicants: 99500 people ahead / 5320 = 19 months
Mar 2026 applicants: 32600 people ahead / 5320 = 6 months

and so on. (There's a range of K values that exactly fit the rounded months given by IRCC - in this case anything from 5271 to 5371 would fit. It's a fairly tight range, so we can take an average).

Then if we derive K for each reporting month since December, we get

Dec: 4,345
Jan: 4,190
Feb: 4,270
Mar: 5,345
Apr: 5,805
May: 5,925
Jun: 5,585
Jul: 5,320

That suggests a mild but significant ramp-up in processing over the last few months.

To restate: I think these K values are IRCC's assumptions about processing speed. I'm guessing that they just take the last month's actual rate, although they may be doing something different. But IRCC's published completions for that window (6280 completions for Dec 15th-Jan 31st) seem consistent with these K values. July's lower figure might reflect last month's issues with suspended certificates.

(The same analysis holds for naturalisation applications, where processing speed seems to have increased from around 21,000 to 27,000 applications per month, presumably to respond to a buildup in the queue.)

Apologies if this restates old ground, but I haven't seen this analysis posted before.

EDIT: Added further analysis below

I'll go a stage further. IF we accept that my 'K' values are indeed the actual numbers processed in the previous month, then we can look at these values in relation to the size of the queue at each date.

For the size of the queue, I'll take the number of people ahead of someone in the most recent cohort. For example, in the 9 Dec 2025 report, there were 38,700 people ahead of someone who applied on 30 Nov 2025. Then per the 14 Jan 2026 report there were 41,000 people ahead of someone who applied on 31 Dec 2025. Thus the queue has grown by 2,300 people*. I use December's K (from the Jan report) of 4,190; so I must have received 6,490 applications and processed 4,190 of them.

I end up with this table, which, if correct, shows the dramatic rise in applications in the April-June period.

Month Applications Processed Queue at month end
Dec............6,490........................4,190.......................41,000
Jan.............9.170.........................4,270.......................45,900
Feb.............8,545........................5,345.......................49,100
Mar..........10,705........................5,805.......................54,000
Apr............20,225.......................5,925.......................68,300
May..........17,385........................5,585.......................80,100
Jun............22,720........................5,320.......................97,500

* I'm using these figures rather than the total queue stated in the report - the latter I think includes people who arrived in the first few days of the following months, which I'll ignore.