I think it's important to note that the department does process hundreds of thousands of permanent resident applications in a given year and has been meeting increasing immigration targets, but I agree with you that the service standards are not realistic service standards, which is why we recommended to the department to be more transparent about exactly the amount of time that it takes to process an application.
There are many aspects that are outside the control of the department and getting access to documents from certain countries might be difficult, but most of the delays we saw were in processes well within the control of the government. I would describe it as poor management of applications and poor inventory management of files that contribute a lot to some of the wait time, and that's well within the department's ability to fix. Being transparent and addressing those issues would help.