val50

If your PR cards are due to expire in the next 9 - 12 months, it might be worth making the application to renew now. We have just found out it is taking Sydney 200 days to renew PR cards that are about to expire, and they are apparently currently only processing applications made in February. We made our applications in April, when it stated it was taking 30 days. Ours expire in September so we thought we had lots of time to get our new cards. It's not really a problem unless you need to travel or work in certain jobs. Unfortunately we fall into both those categories
staffing at CIC in Sydney seems to be the problem - link here:
http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/L...ydney-office/1

CanadaJimmy

If you urgently require them to travel you can usually jump the queue if you can provide evidence. I know someone here who's card expired and he's managing to renew his in just over a month.

Jo&Alex

We went through the exact same problem, when we applied the wait times seemed reasonable so we didn't mark our application as URGENT, and then when the process became long, we found ourselves in trouble. There is the option of getting a travel document from Buffalo, which is what we were ready to do after I tried sending a fax to the number requesting that our application be processed urgently, with no answer from CIC.

Before travelling to Buffalo I though I'd try just re-submitting the WHOLE application, complete with new pictures and ID forms, and a letter explaining that they had our old PR Cards in their possession already. I marked it URGENT on the envelope. Within 3 weeks (just as we were getting ready to travel to Buffalo!!!) we received a letter from the regional CIC office saying they had our new cards.

BTW, there is still no status on e-cas for us, I guess they don't waste their time on that anymore...?

So if you still have a few weeks left before your travels, I'd suggest you try it, it worked for us....

Atlantic Xpat

There are several threads around this subject at the moment. To restate my experience in March. I applied for renewal using the expedited process and enclosing proof of travel (at the end of June). I received my PR card roughly 3 weeks from date of posting the application to Sydney.