One of the biggest issues here has nothing to do with manpower. I believe it has to do with the outdated IT system that the Government of Canada operates upon.
During my time working on this, I learned a ton about how these applications actually got processed inside the IRCC. Every Canadian and every Afghan should know that the portal you fill out online actually just generates an automated email that some human has to answer. That portal only actually started working close to Christmastime.
There are two different databases that these applicants' data was going into. The people answering the phones and emails don't even have access to one of them. I personally sent 15 different applications from 15 unique email addresses. Somebody within the IRCC, who was quite supportive, then looked up every single one of my emails. Guess how many they could find? One.
Where did all my emails go? Why can't our government workers access this information? There needs to be an investigation into the databases that are being used by the Canadian government. Where's all of this information? Where's all the data? Why are none of the emails being actually opened and answered?
Also, several of my emails were in spam. You're using Outlook and emails are going into spam. Could you imagine being stranded in Afghanistan and the email you sent in goes to spam? How is that possible?