Design buildings and take legal responsibility for them. Two degrees, a long internship and an exam before you can use the title.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $81,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $55,000 at the lower end to about $155,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
9 to 11 years after high school, on the usual route.
$49,000 to $114,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territories, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$81,000
Lower end
$55,000
Upper end
$155,000
Job Bank's figures for architects across Canada (2023 to 2024) are $26.44 an hour at the low end, $38.94 median and $74.52 at the high end, about $55,000, $81,000 and $155,000 a year at 40 hours a week.
$45.69 an hour
The median in Alberta, the highest in Canada
British Columbia ($45.14) is close behind, Ontario's median is $41.03 and Quebec's is the lowest, at $32.82. Intern architects, fresh out of the M.Arch (master of architecture), earn less while they log their hours.
Roughly, all in
$49,000 to $114,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is four years of a pre professional degree at $7,000 a year plus two years of the M.Arch (master of architecture) at $8,000 a year, the ExAC (Examination for Architects in Canada), and intern fees while you log your hours. The high end is six or seven years at the top of the tuition range with a laptop, software and model materials on top. Both tuition figures are yearly, so the six or seven years are the whole story, and they need multiplying out. Many graduates carry $30,000 to $60,000 in loans into a first salary in the mid fifties.
Six to seven years of tuition adds up. Many graduates carry $30,000 to $60,000 in student loans into their first job.
Health and dental
Standard at mid-size and large firms. Thin or absent at very small ones.
Pension
Government, university and hospital employers. Rare in private firms.
Professional fees paid
Many firms cover your licence and RAIC (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada) dues.
Ownership
Becoming a partner is the main way pay climbs later in a career.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Two degrees, then years of supervised work, then a national exam.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Physics, Advanced Functions, Calculus and visual arts. Some schools ask for a portfolio or an interview, so start drawing now.
Pre-professional degree
4 years, 5 with co-op
A bachelor's in architectural studies or environmental design. Waterloo, Toronto, Carleton, McGill, UBC (University of British Columbia), Manitoba, Calgary, Dalhousie, Laval, Université de Montréal, TMU (Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson).
M.Arch (master of architecture)
2 to 3 years
The professional degree, accredited by the CACB (Canadian Architectural Certification Board). Two years if your bachelor's was in architecture, three or more if it was not.
Internship
About 3 years
Register as an intern with your provincial association and log 3,720 supervised hours across set categories in the IAP (Internship in Architecture Program), with a mentor.
Exam and licence
About 1 year
Pass the ExAC (Examination for Architects in Canada), a four-part exam held once a year. Then apply to your regulator, such as the OAA (Ontario Association of Architects).
Physics
Required at most schools.
Advanced Functions and Calculus
Required or strongly recommended.
Visual arts
Drawing and composition. Feeds your portfolio.
English
You will write and present constantly.
Technological design or drafting
A head start on drawing software.
Only members of a provincial association, such as the OAA (Ontario Association of Architects), the AIBC (Architectural Institute of British Columbia) or the OAQ (Ordre des architectes du Québec), can call themselves architects or stamp drawings. Every province and the Northwest Territories license architects. Yukon and Nunavut have no architect licence. Licences transfer between provinces under a national agreement with little extra paperwork. Until you are licensed you are an intern architect or a designer, never an architect.
About a dozen accredited schools in Canada.
Ontario
Toronto, Waterloo, Carleton, Laurentian, TMU (Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson).
Quebec
McGill, Laval, Université de Montréal.
West
UBC (University of British Columbia), Calgary, Manitoba.
Atlantic
Dalhousie.
The degrees and the national exam are the same, but Quebec's order sets a fixed number of internship hours and checks your French before it issues a permit.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Keep math and science going. Most applicants then take a college science program, and McGill asks for college math and physics courses.
Pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
2 years at a CEGEP (public college), usually in science or arts and science. Université de Montréal selects on your college grades alone.
Bachelor's in architecture
3 years
At least 3 years (90 credits) at McGill University in English, or Université Laval or Université de Montréal in French.
Professional master's (M.Arch, Master of Architecture)
About 2 years
Required for the permit. McGill's runs 60 credits over 2 years. Quebec's order asks for at least 45 credits.
Internship with the OAQ (Ordre des architectes du Québec)
About 2 years
The Quebec order of architects. Register on its admission roll, then log 3,720 hours, about 2 years full time, within 5 years.
ExAC (Examination for Architects in Canada), then the permit
A few months
You can sit the national exam after 2,800 approved hours. Once all steps are done and your French is shown, the order issues your permit.
Every professional order in Quebec has to check that new members know French. The OAQ (Ordre des architectes du Québec, the Quebec order of architects) does this before the permit. A Quebec high school diploma (DES, Diploma of Secondary Studies) from 1985 to 1986 or later counts, even from an English school. So do 3 years of full-time study in French. Otherwise you pass the exam of the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française, the French language office). You can study at McGill in English and still qualify.
Fees are those listed by the OAQ (Ordre des architectes du Québec, the Quebec order of architects).
Things you don't need, but that help.
LEED (a green building rating system) or Passive House
Low-energy building rules are tightening, especially in BC (British Columbia).
Revit and BIM (building information modelling) skills
Firms hire the person who can run the model.
PMP (Project Management Professional)
Moves you toward running projects and budgets.
A specialty
Hospitals, transit and schools are big public projects with steady budgets.
A portfolio
Drawings, models, photos. It gets you into school and into your first job.
Sketching and model making
Still how ideas get tested in most studios.
A summer on a construction site
You will design better if you have seen how things get built.
Software before school
SketchUp, Rhino or Revit. Student licences cost nothing.
Many architects open a small practice after licensing: houses, renovations, small commercial. Income is uneven for the first few years and you carry your own liability insurance. Others move sideways into real estate development, construction management or design roles at furniture and tech companies, where the pay is often better.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Mostly at a computer in Revit or drawing details, with meetings layered on top. Morning: coordinate a drawing set with the structural and mechanical engineers. Midday: a client call about budget cuts. Afternoon: a site visit to check the work against the drawings, then back to answer contractor questions. The week before a permit submission or a competition can run to 60 hours. Interns draft more; senior staff meet more and design less.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Before you can be licensed you record 3,720 hours of supervised work in categories like design, contract documents and site review, signed off by a mentor. That is about two years of full-time work, but most interns take three or more.
The ExAC (Examination for Architects in Canada) is written over two days each November: the 2026 sitting is November 2 and 3. Fail a section and you wait a full year to try it again.
The stacked concrete homes on the Montreal waterfront started as Moshe Safdie's thesis at McGill. They were built for Expo 67 while he was still in his twenties.
The Blackfoot and Métis architect from Calgary designed the curving Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. He was an early user of computers to work out its curving shapes.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Architecture and planning first, then the rest of the field. See every career in architecture and design.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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