Yes, I did. At the recommandation of my lawyer, I filed directly with TSC and they accepted my case. At the time, which was last December, my lawyer did say that it was not an established process to do so, so there was a risk of the application getting rejected back to NSC, so he just left it up to me to decide. Thing might have changed now. Fortunately, it worked out and they accepted my case in mid-December. Although it has been pending for almost 5 months now, so I am not sure how much time I really saved. It's up to you, but it's do-able.