Unfortunately this serves as a painful reminder to not take what CIC says as gospel. A few of us did a study: we called the CIC call centre, asked the same question to different people, and wrote the answers down. Needless to say, the variation in the answers given to us is as amusing as it is shocking in how contradictory they are to each other.
To the best of my knowledge, if you applied inland, when you applied you would not have expired visitors status till stage 1 approval of your immigration application. For outside application, if your 6 months run out before getting PR approval, then you have to apply to extend your status.