Your analysis made me think...
So they want the best immigrants, period...OK. Just the best.
I reread the news release, and it said they want the highest ranking... Is second place the best, no, right?
So they might just choose the best, which is the top 1 percent... 2nd place is not the best.
(Of course, they can just say the top ten percent)
So now, I think they will just choose the top ten percent, not 1 percent, that's my guess.
As for the reason why they might imply that it's easy to go to Canada, like how entering now is express, it's to create buzz. Awareness will make a lot of people apply...
I think that a part of the pool of applicants will be from people who were part of the 200 thousand backlogged applications.
So that's a big pool. But to actually have the energy to apply again after having been let down before might impact EE application numbers. Because that's how I felt when I applied for FSW 2014, what a let-down. But I still applied, this time with less expectations.