Hi everyone, just wanted to share the experience with my wife's citizenship application:
We first applied in January last year, but never received an AOR. IRCC later claimed they "lost the application" and asked us to submit a form to withdraw the application so that they can issue a refund. I still have no idea how that could happen, since we submitted the application online and later we managed to find the application number on the tracking portal, so it definitely got submitted.
After that we had to temporarily move to the US due to my work, and resubmitted a second application in May.
What I noticed is that IRCC really doesn't seem to like applicants who live abroad, even though nothing in the requirements disallows it, and
IRCC's own website claims it's ok. First they asked us for a Canadian mailing address. Then they asked my wife to attend an in-person interview at Scarborough office, where they really grilled her with all kinds of questions: "Why are you in the US?", "When will you come back?", "Where were you when you took the test?". They even told her that she should've been in Canada when she submitted the application.
This made us really worried, especially because we knew about another case where a different IRCC office was strict with someone living outside Canada. To our surprise, the other case resolved successfully, and in the beginning of January the tracker for my wife's case also updated to "Take the oath", which is now scheduled for February 14.
We still haven't received the email with oath details, but GCMS notes I ordered already indicate that the oath will be a virtual ceremony with Scarborough office.
I hope this information is helpful, since I feel our experience is unique enough, and I haven't seen enough similar reports.