An influx of refugee claimants wouldn't have an immediate impact on the immigration appeal division, because that would be handled by our refugee protection division. However, once people are granted refugee status, they become permanent residents in Canada and at that point are able to sponsor family members to join them. If those family members are then denied, that would become an issue for the immigration appeal division.
Given that at the moment our average processing time for refugee claims is 22.5 months, in the current scenario you wouldn't see an impact on the appeal division for probably a couple of years. When the Balanced Refugee Reform Act comes into force and the new timelines kick in, the process will be much quicker, obviously, so the potential impact on the immigration appeal division would be seen in a shorter period of time.
I couldn't say that 500 additional refugees would translate into a specific number of appeals at the immigration appeal division, because it very much would depend on how many family sponsorships they wanted to do, how many were accepted or rejected, and if rejected, whether they chose to appeal. I'd be pulling a number out of thin air.