Timeline for Ottawa CIC office

mikeathome wrote: We took test early March and finally got our test results last Friday, after 4.5 months. That should be faster now as you get the results straight after the test. This is confirmed for Ottawa as other friends took test two weeks ago and were given the results 20 mins after the test. It looks like that from test taken to oath ceremony, in standard cases, it takes about 6 months. We have several friends who are all in this time frame, incl. myself. Q: To all who got their citizenship: Is it possible, in principle, to go to the passport office in Ottawa straight after the ceremony? What is required? Well, you could say another one who just leaves the country after he gets citizenship. The truth is, I want to visit my dying dad one more time. I like to travel with Canadian passport on re-entering to avoid q's. It's a couple hundreds km from the place we live to Ottawa... Overall process time to-date: close to 26 months, no oath date yet, possibly September

Congratulations on passing the test.

As for applying for the passport, last I saw was this:

New citizens need to wait at least two business days after their citizenship ceremony before applying for services such as a passport.

This is quoted from the CIC web page Prepare for the Citizenship Ceremony.

No need to apply for the passport in Ottawa however. There are passport service locations in many other locations. In Windsor for example. Sure, for someone who is outside Canada and just traveling in for the oath, that is not convenient.


As for time from test to oath:

mikeathome wrote: It looks like that from test taken to oath ceremony, in standard cases, it takes about 6 months. We have several friends who are all in this time frame, incl. myself.

In standard cases, meaning the majority of routinely processed applications, going forward the timeline between oath and ceremony should be a matter of days or weeks, not months, and way, way less than six months. Of course for some it will be longer, months, even six months, or for some even longer than that.

But for most routine applicants, my sense of the recent changes regarding test procedures (including notifying applicants of test results and scheduling re-tests) is that they are in part intended to facilitate shorter timelines to oath ceremonies. See Operational Bulletin 530 (Retesting and communicating results of the citizenship knowledge test), particularly the part discussing next step if applicant passes the test.

Beyond that, reports of personal experience indicate wide, wide variation in how long it takes to be scheduled for the oath. Some are scheduled for the oath before they even appear for the test, the oath scheduled for same day, next day, within the week. Others are given notice of the oath at the test event, timeline ranging from within the week to within a month. Many appear to be scheduled for the oath within one to two months.

But we have some participants here who have been waiting, following the test, for many months, still no notice, no RQ, no other indication of non-routine processing, but still waiting.

So, no guarantees. But for most the oath should be scheduled a lot sooner than six months after the test.

Hi,

One of my friends got ceremony notice on Aug 1st

her timeline:
applied Aug 2011
in process April 2012
Test March 2013
Ceremony Aug 2013

Hi,

Any updates people in Ottawa ??

Let us know please...

Applied 8 Mar 2012
in process 23 Nov 2012
Test 23 Sep 2013
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