What I don't understand is this. If they are so busy why not hire more staff? Can't afford to? Increase the price. I would have gladly paid more to be complete in a month. Treat it like a business...
As working in the IT industry odds are they have a specific SLA (service Licence Agreement) which states they have to process an application in an average amount of days. Over a year they probably make the average, thus no need for extra staff. Also the price is probably only a portion of what it costs to do this. Just a security check for the mounties as part of the process for adopting children is $75 a person. Also they have the mandatory cooldown period of 28 days, they won't even touch it for that long which probably is what is happening is the letter sits in a box for 28 days from day of receiving it.
What it looks like now is:
Mail received to submission into system: ~30-35 days
Enter system to References able to check: ~30 days
References talked to: 1-?? (assuming you find the day of and have your references call but curious how long it would take for them to get around to calling references)
References complete to issuing: seen as short as 5 minutes
So there is two things to shorten:
1. Submit application AT THE SAME TIME you send your results to the CFO as this gets it into the system earlier, odds are they won't touch it by the time the CFO sends you the results back, you can then call them and ask for a fax number to fax in your results. I got my application number about 3 days before I got my results back
2. Have your references call with your application number and give it.
When a buddy got his restricted he let both myself and his other reference know they could call. I called in the morning and when his other reference called in the afternoon they told him they only needed to talk to one.