3500 approved applications. Applications can be "complete" as you say, but they need to be approved (last stage). After they reach 11.000 given permanent residencies throughout all applications. The program will shut down. Or in Nov 2024 if those numbers aren't reached. And people who applied and weren't able to be reviewed/accepted or approved sadly would have to look for other ways of applying.
Approving 3500 applications will take a couple of months. In fact in the article the spokesman mentioned that they expect that they expect that to be done by March 2024. They will receive a lot of applications in that time.
IRCC does not seem to turn away already received complete eligible application even when they have met the quota. They didn’t in TR PR applications 2 years ago, when they accepted 4500 extra applications by mistake.
In my conservative estimate around 36000 could be eligible potential anchors. That is a very conservative estimate, could easily be 10000-15000 more. Again being very conservative atleast 1/3 would want to be anchors. Thats easily 11000 applications, not even people but just applications. That number could easily get to 15000 application given the time this is going to stay open.
So, at this point, the question is are IRCC going to turn away already received complete eligible applications beyond the first 3500. They have not turned away such applications before. But, the numbers we are talking about are going to be way beyond the actual target number they have said.