It makes no sense to invest half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money to have a student graduate from medical school only to deny them access to a residency program — the last requirement they must fulfill before they can become a practising doctor.

But that’s what happened to 114 Canadian medical graduates who were not successfully matched to a residency program in 2017. More alarming is the estimate in a report this week from the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada that that number could climb to more than 330 in 2021, if no corrective action is taken.

This is short-sighted and wrong-headed for several reasons.

First, it’s a waste of taxpayer and students’ own investments in training (tuition, alone, for an Ontario graduate medical program runs around $25,000 annually, not to mention subsidies from governments).

Second, there is the personal devastation to students who do not obtain a residency placement. Indeed, one graduate student, Robert Chu, tragically took his own life in 2016 after being denied entrance to a residency program two years in a row.

And third, there is a documented shortage of doctors in Canada’s health care system. Increasing the number of residencies could help to solve that problem.

In its report, the association made three sensible recommendations to address these issues. They should all be acted on immediately by provincial health ministries and medical schools.

The first is for each province to boost funding to create additional residency spots. There should be one for each medical school graduate.

The second calls for an overhaul of the two-round system overseen by the Canadian Resident Matching Service. That can see Canadian students who attended foreign medical schools in the Caribbean, Ireland and Australia, for example, obtain a position over those who graduated from Canadian ones.

The answer to that competitive problem might be to increase residency placements overall.

The third is for medical schools to create ways to support unmatched graduates, such as allowing them to complete a fifth year of medical school during which they could hone their skills and experiences while waiting to reapply to residency programs.

It’s not just medical graduates who would benefit if the provinces and medical schools act on the recommendations. After all, Canada’s health care system is not as competitive on the world stage as it could and should be, mostly because of a shortage of doctors.

Indeed, a 2017 report from the New York-based Commonwealth Fund ranked Canada dead last compared to 11 other advanced nations in the number of doctors it has per 1,000 residents.

In 2014, for example, Canada had 2.5 doctors for every thousand people. Norway, by comparison, had 4.4.

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That lack of access to doctors in this country was one of the main reasons the fund ranked Canada ninth overall out of the 11 countries in the quality of care patients receive. That is unacceptable.

The country can’t leave medical graduates in the lurch, nor can it afford to continue down the path it’s on with too few doctors to provide much-needed health services for an aging population. The provinces must increase the number of residency spots.