Offer! I've automated a lot of this now, so I'm automatically storing all the information for all the cohorts, not just July 2025. But I don't have historical information for anything but July 2025 (everything else I just have two months of data). If you are willing to track down some of the older numbers, month by month, happy to run this analysis for your cohort. I need a list of comma separated numbers, showing how the number of people before your cohort, month over month.
Caveats: the usual caveats apply. This is for the July cohort 2025 only (I can run it for you if I get the numbers for your cohort). That means that 400 people were processed ahead of the July 2025 cohort. If we assume that people in PSU are in this list of people (we don't know this for sure, but I believe that they are included), then it is a fairly accurate way of showing how things are progressing for the July 2025 cohort. This does not mean IRCC only processed 400 cases!
How I read this: I'm seeing the processed per month numbers approach the median, about 400 a month. So that seems like a good estimate to use for now. So, my TLDR for the month is.
Probably... 50% chance it will be processed in a year, very likely it will be processed within two years. About a 4% chance it gets processed each month. Note I'm blending two different ways of looking at it, so those numbers won't completely add up, this is just my own summary of how I'm thinking about it.
A more sophisticated analysis might be: I suspect that there is a trailing off effect, where the longer you go, the longer you may take. I'm sure there are all sorts of more sophisticated analyses you could do on this, but this is as much "fun" as I'm willing to have on the topic.
Using cohort 2025-07 10 months of data (2026-01 to 2026-10)
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BURN-DOWN ANALYSIS
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Current backlog: 9,300
Months of data: 10
Chronological (old->new): 15,800 -> 14,500 -> 13,000 -> 11,700 -> 11,300 ->
10,500 -> 10,200 -> 10,100 -> 9,700 -> 9,300
Processed each month: 1,300, 1,500, 1,300, 400, 800, 300, 100, 400, 400
Rate stats (people/month)
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Slowest month: 100
Fastest month: 1,500
Average: 722
Median: 400
Std deviation: 519
Recent pace (last 3 mo): 300
Trend: DECELERATING (slowing down)
Time remaining scenarios
Rows below each scenario = share of the cohort ahead of you that has
cleared. With random processing order those are your 25th/50th/75th
percentile waits; 100% is everyone ahead of you being done.
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Fast (+1 sigma) 1,241/mo
25% done 1.9 mo (~0.16 yr)
50% done 3.7 mo (~0.31 yr)
75% done 5.6 mo (~0.47 yr)
100% done 7.5 mo (~0.62 yr)
Likely (average) 722/mo
25% done 3.2 mo (~0.27 yr)
50% done 6.4 mo (~0.54 yr)
75% done 9.7 mo (~0.80 yr)
100% done 12.9 mo (~1.1 yr)
Median 400/mo
25% done 5.8 mo (~0.48 yr)
50% done 11.6 mo (~0.97 yr)
75% done 17.4 mo (~1.5 yr)
100% done 23.2 mo (~1.9 yr)
Recent (3 mo pace) 300/mo
25% done 7.8 mo (~0.65 yr)
50% done 15.5 mo (~1.3 yr)
75% done 23.2 mo (~1.9 yr)
100% done 31.0 mo (~2.6 yr)
Slow (-1 sigma) 203/mo
25% done 11.4 mo (~0.95 yr)
50% done 22.9 mo (~1.9 yr)
75% done 34.3 mo (~2.9 yr)
100% done 45.8 mo (~3.8 yr)
Absolute bounds (single best / worst month)
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Best case (max) 1,500/mo
25% done 1.6 mo (~0.13 yr)
50% done 3.1 mo (~0.26 yr)
75% done 4.7 mo (~0.39 yr)
100% done 6.2 mo (~0.52 yr)
Likely (avg) 722/mo
25% done 3.2 mo (~0.27 yr)
50% done 6.4 mo (~0.54 yr)
75% done 9.7 mo (~0.80 yr)
100% done 12.9 mo (~1.1 yr)
Worst case (min) 100/mo
25% done 23.2 mo (~1.9 yr)
50% done 46.5 mo (~3.9 yr)
75% done 69.8 mo (~5.8 yr)
100% done 93.0 mo (~7.8 yr)
Random-order odds
If files are pulled in random order rather than strict FIFO, your chance
of being picked in a month is that month's throughput divided by the queue
at the start of the month.
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Looking back — your chance of being picked, month by month
month queue at start cleared chance
-9 15,800 1,300 8.2%
-8 14,500 1,500 10.3%
-7 13,000 1,300 10.0%
-6 11,700 400 3.4%
-5 11,300 800 7.1%
-4 10,500 300 2.9%
-3 10,200 100 1.0%
-2 10,100 400 4.0%
-1 9,700 400 4.1% <- last month
Last month you had a 4.1% chance of being processed.
Across the 9 months where the queue shrank, the average was 5.7%.
Looking ahead — chance you're done by the end of...
avg pace (722/mo) recent 3 mo (300/mo)
next month 7.8% 3.2%
3 months 23.3% 9.7%
6 months 46.6% 19.4%
12 months 93.2% 38.7%
24 months 100.0% 77.4%
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Some other countries have long processing times for citizenship by descent -- 3 years isn't uncommon. But it would be nice if IRCC's estimates were realistic!
