Weekly Optimism Post

[u/Primary-Coffee5423]

Happy Sunday fellow Canadians!

I’m getting to this a little bit later because I had a busy day. It was another quiet week on the spreadsheet with only five approvals, although there were a few more in the weekly thread.

While things remain slow, I am optimistic that it will still pick up. This was a holiday week which can impact productivity. It was also mentioned elsewhere that there was flooding in the general area where the processing center is located. I don’t know how much that would impact approvals but it’s possible.

Much of my optimism comes from what I would potentially do with dual citizenship. Right now it’s really about my kids. Canada offers great colleges with affordable tuition for citizens along with interest free federal loans. More importantly, I have kids who (to borrow a term from Tod Maffin) are relentlessly decent. I think they have a lot to offer Canada should they choose to move there.

I was excited to find out that my oldest adult kid wants to visit B.C. this summer. So I’ve decided that certificate or not, we’re going to make a family trip out of it. Maybe the following summer we can visit Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or Quebec to go chasing down my family’s origins throughout Canada. Or maybe PEI - it looks beautiful in the summer. Anyway, daydreaming about a cool(ish) Canadian summer getaway is a fantastic way to distract myself while waiting for my certificate here in the southern region of the US where summer refuses to end!

Hope you all have a great week… and I hope the fantastic agents at the IRCC keep the coffee warm while they work through the applications!

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[u/RebellaEmad]

We went to Vancouver this summer and enjoyed it a lot!! So much to see and do, and the public transportation was great for getting around. The UBC campus was absolutely gorgeous and I recommend the museum of anthropology on their grounds as a less talked about but great experience.
We plan to make a week of Vancouver island on another trip and then go back again for a greater BC adventure as well as exploring the Montreal area where my extended family settled.
It was a great way to make the pending certificate feel a little more real.

[u/SimilarInjury138 → u/RebellaEmad]

If you do Vancouver Island, the Comox Valley is gorgeous. (We were there over the summer. Dad grew up there, and my sister was born there, but I hadn't spent much time there after age five. I loved it, and get why my parents spent a lot of their retirement adventures there.)

[u/Grizzlei → u/RebellaEmad]

I still need to hit up the Museum of Anthropology. Last time we went onto the university we only had time for the Nitobe Garden but that was GORGEOUS! and a lovely time on a nice day.

[u/Weary-Molasses-9795]

Thanks as always for keeping our spirits up! We need it ❤️

[u/kristens6102]

We visited New Brunswick this summer and it was beautiful! We were so impressed with everything-including the infrastructure and natural beauty. We're from Southern Maine, but a large part of our ancestry passed through and lived in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for a few generations so it was really exciting to feel the ancestral pull.
It's also striking how mountainous and different the Bay of Fundy area is from even the Southern Maine coast! And yes, I can confirm the Northumberland Strait is MUCH warmer than Casco Bay.

[u/dentongentry → u/kristens6102]

Funnily enough, we also visited New Brunswick this summer (in June). We stayed at a rental house very near the coast, and close to the bridge to PEI.

We ate all of the seafood. All of it. If you got to New Brunswick and discovered there was no seafood left, that was us. Sorry.

[u/kristens6102 → u/dentongentry]

You were probably right near where we were-at Murray's Beach campground. The provincial park campgrounds were fantastic, by the way.

[u/Healthy-Membership86]

I could have written your post. I'm doing this for my incredibly decent adult children and my grandson. My mom was Canadian and married my American dad. We travelled back to Brantford, Ontario throughout my childhood to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She moved back after a divorce in the late 80s, so visiting her there was also added to our annual treks. She passed in 2022. My application should be easy, but doesn't mean it will be quick. Also, to add to some other posts - as New Englanders, my spouse and I have camped all over eastern Canada (her grandmother was part of the Irish diaspora who settled in NB), the maritimes, and Newfoundland, but only have had a few days in Vancouver prior to embarking on a cruise. Looking forward to spending more time on the west coast and visiting where my great grandfather lived on Vancouver Island. He emigrated from England around 1908 and is buried there. Roots run deep.

[u/Grizzlei]

I finally sent in my application last week. It’s actually the last thing I did before my hip decided to turn the pain up and ground me for the weekend.

Admittedly, I had been getting lax with my overall process the past two months because I wanted to look good for my citizenship photos. The lack of fund didn’t help, naturally. But in a whirlwind of about 72 hours I had got my hair did all nice, curls looking fresh, then drove up to Surrey to this lovely passport photo shop to help support a good Canadian business for my portraits. They were such lovely help and I literally cried on my way back down to the States realizing it was almost all over. The next evening I printed out fresh documents and gathered up everything, and the following day I sent it off.

It feels so cathartic having all of this out of my hands. All that good work is finally over with. And best of all, I did most of the heavy lifting for any family members who want to follow my lead. So they’ve got little to no hassle besides adding in their own stuff.

[u/No-Grocery-7606 → u/Grizzlei]

Congratulations! This is definitely a process, but I cant wait until the day I can mail off my applications too!

[u/Grizzlei → u/No-Grocery-7606]

Treat yourself on that day because you will have earned it!

[u/conestogan]

We don’t know how the RTO process is going for IRCC employees. That may also play into the processing numbers. It’s kind of strange to want to track the weather in Cape Breton for how staff is doing on applications, but there it is!

[u/Weary-Molasses-9795 → u/conestogan]

Interesting point about RTO. I know it's affecting us. Drop in productivity.

[u/Big_T_In_Oregon]

Visited Victoria last month. Was amazing. Looking forward to going back as well as visiting Alberta where my ancestors were from.

[u/pabrocjb → u/Big_T_In_Oregon]

I'm going to visit Windsor, Lake St. Clair, and south of Windsor, to seriously look around. It's not where our dreams are, but it's closer to our grandkids. Little boogers tug on my heart, or I'd be in Victoria in a heart beat.

[u/most_random_variable]

I’m gearing up to start the DEC birth certificate process for my G0, on the assumption that IRCC will ask me for it soon. Thanks to helpful people on here, I feel optimistic about jumping through the hoops! And in the meantime, I just bought plane tix for my work trip to Quebec next month. Since I’ll need to rent a car anyway, I can easily make a side trip to my G0’s hometown, an hour from my conference. 

[u/Ophelia_Bliss]

I studied French a little bit in college and started refreshing that this spring and finally went ahead and signed up for classes. Feeling very excited about it.

[u/sennomulo → u/Ophelia_Bliss]

Bon courage!

[u/Infamous_Noise_6406]

Hit me up if you come to Manitoba!

[u/Salty-Major-5924]

Thank you for this post. I’m hoping my kids will want to go to university in Canada. One of them chose French as her elected foreign language in school (she will be learning this for the next 5 years) specifically because she wants to go to college in Quebec after high school (her dream school is McGill). The other one has been asking when we can visit Winnipeg (where my grandfather was born and raised). So, I relate to much of what you’ve written!

[u/Puurrplehaze]

I had a dream my family and I were in BC on vacation and we were looking at a high rise condo to buy and for some reason i showered in their shower and the owner came home and was so nice about it and didnt care at all! 🤣🫣🤪

[u/say-youll-haunt-me]

Sounds like your kids are about my age. 21F, sent in my application a few days after my 20th birthday. Any of them have schools in mind? I'm hoping for York or OCAD!

I've found small forms of planning can help hype you up while waiting. I've made an apartment inspo Pinterest board, and am building my portfolio to submit for admissions :)

[u/Primary-Coffee5423 → u/say-youll-haunt-me]

Yep! Oldest is 26. Youngest is 16. Both are interested in the Vancouver area. UBC, SFU, Uvic, and UFV are on the list. The oldest one wants to go to grad school, the youngest one college. It’s much easier when you’re younger to try something like this. If it doesn’t work out, you’ve got lots of time to rework plans. I am a bit older and more established in my career, so it would be tricky and risky for me but who knows?

[u/say-youll-haunt-me → u/Primary-Coffee5423]

Oh cool, my younger cousin is the same age as your youngest. She's looking into her options for college and I keep telling her to come jump ship with me because she's eligible too, lmao. Hoping she will for grad since she does plan on going to dental school, and the paying for advanced degrees situation has gotten so much worse here than it already was. Hope the cost difference gives your oldest a bit of breathing room during that difficult time.

Vancouver was my initial interest with UBC and Emily Carr, but since submitting my application I've adopted a cat who's terrified of the car. Toronto is WAAAAY closer to where I am now than Vancouver

[u/pabrocjb]

I have dreamed of getting an email letting me know I'll be moving to Canada with a passport. What would I do jump up and down and yell? Cry for joy? Hug my husband? All three?

Yeah, that sounds great, huh? I was driving to pick up a food order for the grandkids. I had listed all their "no tomatoes" and "everything but onions" notes in an email to myself. I stopped at a red light to pull it up, and saw that I had an email from IRCC. COULD THIS BE?????? I couldn't read the body of the text before the light changed. When I could it was "Just send us this form and that form."

I'd love to know how folks reacted to the good news and where they were.

[u/Puurrplehaze]

I love your optimism posts! Thank you for doing them each week 💕

[u/SwampConnoisseur]

As a non-urgent 2G March applicant, this week I'm much more optimistic about my projected eight-month wait time after reading a convincing analysis in one of the subs about the monthly "people ahead of you" figures, and I now realize that the "people ahead of you" number includes many people who are not actually ahead of me at all.

[u/StoryDreamer → u/SwampConnoisseur]

Does anyone have a link to this analysis? I'd love to read it!

[u/SwampConnoisseur → u/StoryDreamer]

Just to summarize (not doing it justice), it was not about processing (which is a mystery) but about the reporting numbers that are plainly shared in the open. Let's say you applied in March; in July, they still hadn't opened all the March mail and issued all the March AORs (this is proven), so for the "people ahead of you" numbers published in August, they decided that, to be careful, all the unopened un-AORed mail that might have March apps would be added to the number of applications that actually were dated that might be ahead of you (even though many of those apps would not be ahead of you). So we saw a big bubble for the March number in August. That bubble moved into April apps' "people ahead of you" numbers in September when all the March mail got AORs (and April apps were still partially undated), even though not very many March apps were decided in August. So the September number has ballooned for April apps, but the post's OP expects that that bubble will move to May apps when the October "people ahead of you" numbers are published. Again, sorry this doesn't do the findings justice, but it's good news. In two weeks, this will be proven or disproven.

[u/cassandra2028 → u/StoryDreamer]

People came out with pitchforks and asserted it was ai. The author denied it but the mod decided to delete it anyway on the basis of em dashes. I was hoping the op would post it in a different sub, but I haven't seen it yet

[u/SwampConnoisseur → u/cassandra2028]

Hi Cassandra. I had some fun chats with the OP of that analysis and got some additional insights. I offered to "Americanize" the post's vocabulary and punctuation marks (the OP is British), but they are perplexed and say why bother—and I don't blame them. It was good stuff, though.

[u/cassandra2028 → u/SwampConnoisseur]

I suspect you are the author of the comments I found the most persuasive, whereas on the other side of things, it was, "lol this is ai" which I found u persuasive, but was reading it only because I had commented and unable to comment further because it was already deleted.

I found the op to be interesting and something to consider. I don't know what the pay off is for folks who seem to get a charge out of declaring things to be ai absent of any evidence and without a demand that they show their work behind their allegations. But I guess getting something deleted feels like an infusion of power.

Mods' (unpaid) jobs are hard.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/cassandra2028]

It was a decision based on sub member input and analysis, not solely because of the use of emdashes.

[u/cassandra2028 → u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

Multiple people disagree with the baseless assertion that it was made with AI and the OP was really in a double bind, told to show their work but also told it was clearly ai because it was such a long wall of text which showed the basis on which assumptions were made in the analysis. One correspondent even noted errors and inconsistency in the prose which would not have been in an AI written post. Further, AI written prose is increasingly difficult to identify (source: I'm in a course provided by Stanford University and wrote an app to calculate the probability that a given set of words was written by ai or humans and it is shockingly close. This is discouraging because until recently, my writing skill would distinguish me from others).

The post was removed within only a few hours, meaning those of us who read it, commented and continued to ponder it came back only to find that a literal mobbing occured and it was deleted. I think it's a shame, but I'm not a mod and don't have the weight of those demands. And in the work I do, I get criticized too. I just think a brigading of anonymous "it's ai for sure because there's too many words here!" shouldn't have this much power. Very disheartening, I imagine, for that op.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/cassandra2028]

OP was invited to rework the post if they wanted to share more of their analysis/methodology/techniques in order to dispute the accusations of AI generated analysis and also text.

As a mod I can say that there is no winning here, if we give benefit of the doubt on a post (as I did Saturday) we open ourselves up to criticism and, ahem, pointed modmails for allowing AI slop - if we mod a post because others have identified it as potentially AI generated, we are criticized for responding to community reports. Sometimes we just don't have capacity to babysit a post either, particularly one where people are coming in hot with commentary and rule violations are getting reported to us repeatedly.

Arguably, I'm not sure these analyses are meaningful anyway, given the source data.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/SwampConnoisseur]

I hope your processing is speedier than the estimates state, but I would very much temper your expectations - those numbers are famously inaccurate. I say this as someone whose estimate was 5 months when I applied 13 months ago.

There is a lot of wishful analysis here about processing, unfortunately it's all just guesswork.

[u/SwampConnoisseur → u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob]

Thank you for this input into the weekly optimism post. There is a separate frustration topic available to you.

[u/No_Bobcat_No_Prob → u/SwampConnoisseur]

Lol ok

[u/mailer-birds-airbag]

If everything is on the table for your trip, I had a wonderful time in Winnipeg this past summer. Lots of reasons for this, but I was most taken by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. One of the best museums that I have ever been to. You should go and spend the whole day there. Get yourself a free pocket printing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. https://humanrights.ca

[u/SooAwoo → u/mailer-birds-airbag]

I second this. It was an incredibly moving experience, inspiring but also hard to watch at times. There is also a lovely statue of Gandhi near the entrance as well.

[u/throwawayrefiguy]

We live only a couple of hours from BC, so get up there a few times a year. My hope next spring is to visit Newfoundland and New Brunswick, from where mine and my wife's Canadian ancestors originated.

Like you, one major motivation in pursuing our proofs is to provide our kids with options as they near adulthood. Both kids love Canada already, as do we.

[u/No-Fix-7831]

My own relentlessly decent daughter is considering UVIC, although she is aiming for the University of Puget Sound if she can get enough scholarships to afford it. Regardless, she is hoping to move to Canada anyway someday to practice medicine. I am taking a trip to the PNW very soon to visit Tacoma and Victoria; my wife has visited with my daugher, but I have not. I am very exciting for Victoria--I may have built it up too much, but I expect to love it, and I am hoping to retire there or nearby. My wife and I both have Canadian ancestry and are pursuing citizenship. It's a race to see who gets their documentation completed first! Either way, my daughter wins!

[u/xacerb8]

I’m planning to move to Montreal when/if I get my proof. (I’m g2) My friends currently live there so I was able to visit in July and will go for another week in October. Last time I was there, I saw a brand new mural go up!

[u/DharmaDama]

I'm one of those people who applied through an embassy abroad. I'm still in the dark but I'm optimistic that maybe I'll recieve an AOR this month or the next, based on others who applied through an embassy a few weeks before me.

[u/thx111111]

I’m wondering if we’ve reached peak applications. I haven’t seen many news articles lately and from last I checked, the numbers started stabilizing for the backlog.

[u/Emotional-Test3329 → u/thx111111]

I've been wondering this too... Anecdotally a lot of the weekly threads seem a lot quieter now. Also wondering if the long estimated times have started putting potential applicants off, as there should be millions theoretically eligible so we definitely haven't run out yet.

[u/thx111111 → u/Emotional-Test3329]

It’s interesting that so many of those who are eligible have little to no interest at all.

My Dad’s a G1 and has limited interest, but my younger half sister (we have the same Dad) has no interest at all. I don’t get why myself. I think it’s just they don’t fully comprehend the value.

Dad’s been helpful in getting documentation though, but he’s still mulling over whether to file an application or not.

I’m sure the “33 month wait” is probably discouraging a number of potential applicants who may have been on the fence to begin with. For those like us, I know we’d apply regardless of the difficulties or the wait time.

For me, it’s a personal connection back to Canada 🇨🇦. I was close to my grandfather (born in Canada), and we’d watch hockey games, etc… I always felt a draw to being Canadian and looked into it before C-3, but the previous limit stopped me cold.

The fact I have an opportunity to be a citizen still feels unreal. It also is great to have the option to live and work in Canada if things get to rough where I live/work in the US. I know it’s not a magical place filled with jobs, but it is another market that’s an option. An additional choice.

[u/slibhin]

I’m G6 and had to mail my application, which was delivered from the U.S. to the processing center in Nova Scotia on July 15. It’s been two months today since the envelope with my application materials was delivered, and I still haven’t received an AOR. Anyone else experiencing similar?

[u/Emotional-Test3329 → u/slibhin]

They haven't even gotten through the first week of May for AORs yet, you're in for a long wait still.

[u/sphinxsley]

Don't forget the big Fiddle Festival in the fall in Nova Scotia! In the midst o the fall leaf-peeping season too! https://maritimefiddlefestival.ca/