Thank you for the question.
As you identify, this was the recommendation that came out in 2018. In fact, we did have a significant positive response to that, in that we had three provinces that actually changed their policy around how the match was structured, which enabled a significant decrease in the number of unmatched.
However, unfortunately, those numbers have started creeping up again. The major issue that remains is that we do not have the appropriate buffer between the number of graduates of Canadian medical schools and the number of residency positions.
We know that when we have a buffer of at least 10 positions—so again, for 100 graduates—there is the opportunity for about 110 residency positions, and these are positions in all specialties, in family medicine and all the other specialties. That allows a match for just about everybody. Back in 2009, we had 11 unmatched Canadian graduates across the country. We're really hoping to be able to get back to those types of numbers and not the nearly 100 that we have now. It really requires the provinces to be able to get to that ratio. We're hoping that your committee and the federal government will support encouraging the provinces to get to that level of residency numbers in each jurisdiction.