It takes a long time to integrate with the EU Single Market even without having to actually design an entire new form of association, which is what an EU Associated Member would be.

All you have to do is look at the time it took to negotiate the British Exit Treaty which established their relationship with the EU after Leave, and this was a nation which started with regulatory norms entirelly aligned with the EU ones and wanted to be free to set their own norms on some domains, so a much simpler situation than trying to come up with a semi-convergence standard for countries following completelly different norms which aren't trying to fully converge with EU norms to become EU members (the latter being a process that usually takes more than a decade, by the way).

So far all we have is the kind of rosy and incredibly vague talkie-talkie from a particularly incompetent salesman-type on the EU side, well before the "technical" people even just start looking into how to actually do it.

There being true will amongst the EU countries for this (which I believe there is: in the various countries here I lived in, the perception of Canadians is very positive), I suspect this "EU Member Association" from von der Leyen will in practice just be a fancy name for broad trade treaty on Products, rather than something akin to the EEA association.

Doesn't mean that Canada and the EU can't further converge and the thing turn into much more in the mid and long term, though, just don't expect this talkie-talkie to yield anything genuinelly significative (rather than just loud politician proclamations about something which in practice is nothing special) in a year or two.