Study living things for a government, a university or a consulting firm. The degree is the easy part; the funding is the hard part.
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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 $83,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $53,000 at the lower end to about $139,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 6 years after high school, on the usual route.
$28,000 to $41,000 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 British Columbia. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited 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
$83,000
Lower end
$53,000
Upper end
$139,000
Job Bank's national median is $40 an hour, about $83,000 a year full time. That page pools biologists with other life scientists, so the top of the range is mostly people with a PhD and years of experience.
$58.34 an hour
The median in the Northwest Territories for the group, the highest in Canada
Among the provinces, Saskatchewan is highest at $42.85 and Prince Edward Island lowest at $35.90. Many first jobs are seasonal contracts, so the year may not be full.
Roughly, all in
$28,000 to $41,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The four year undergraduate degree is the only tuition in the normal case. The low end is an in province public university with field gear supplied by an employer, the high end a costlier university plus your own boots and kit. Graduate school in science is normally paid, not paid for: assistantships and scholarships usually cover tuition and add a small stipend. The hidden cost is the stretch of low income years, not a tuition bill.
Graduate school in science is normally paid, not paid for. The real cost is the years of low income while your friends are earning.
Federal government
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Good pay, a pension, slow hiring.
Provincial ministries
Fish, wildlife, forests, parks and water.
Environmental consulting
The biggest private employer. Steady work doing surveys and impact assessments for mines, pipelines and developments.
Universities
Research and teaching. Permanent professor jobs are rare and very competitive.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One degree gets you in the door. A second one decides how far you go.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry and math. Get outside: volunteer with a naturalist club, a stream team or a shelter.
Bachelor of Science in biology
4 years
Four years. Pick an honours stream with a research thesis if you can. Summer research assistant jobs matter more than your marks.
First jobs or graduate school
1 to 2 years
Either take field and lab technician contracts, or go straight into a funded master's degree.
Master's degree
2 years
Two years, usually paid through teaching and research assistantships. This is the point where you stop being a helper and start designing studies.
PhD, if you want to lead research
4 to 6 years
Four to six more years. Only worth it if you want to run your own research program.
Biology
Required for every biology degree.
Chemistry
Also required. Biology gets very chemical after first year.
Math and data
Modern biology is statistics. This surprises people.
English
Science is mostly writing: proposals, reports and papers.
In British Columbia anyone practising applied biology, such as advice on habitats, wildlife or ecosystems, must be registered with the College of Applied Biologists, which grants the Registered Professional Biologist (R.P.Bio) title. Alberta protects the Professional Biologist (P.Biol) title, from the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists, but does not require it to work. Elsewhere anyone can work as a biologist. Both titles need a degree plus a few years of supervised experience.
British Columbia
University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University.
Prairies
University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, University of Manitoba.
Ontario and Quebec
University of Guelph, University of Toronto, Queen's University, Trent University, McGill University, Universite Laval.
Atlantic Canada
Dalhousie University, Memorial University, University of New Brunswick, Acadia University.
Biology has no professional order in Quebec, so the difference is the school route: 2 years of CEGEP (public college), then a bachelor's that is usually 3 years.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math (Technical and Scientific, or Science), chemistry and physics. The Science program at college asks for all three.
Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
Program 200.B1 at a CEGEP (public college): calculus, physics, chemistry and biology. Taught in English at John Abbott and Marianopolis colleges, among others.
Bachelor's in biology
3 years
Usually 90 credits after CEGEP. Concordia teaches in English, with co-op work terms in its honours and specialization programs. Sherbrooke, in French, has paid co-op internships and bridges from some technical DECs.
Optional: join the ABQ (Association des biologistes du Québec)
The Quebec association of biologists is voluntary, not a licensing body. Since 2023 it has asked to bring biologists into the order of chemists, which would make the title regulated.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Statistics and the R programming language
The single most useful add-on. Biologists who can analyse their own data are always in demand.
Mapping software
Geographic information systems turn field notes into maps that decision makers actually read.
Species identification
Being the person who can identify birds, plants or insects by sight gets you on survey crews.
Boat, first aid and off-road driving tickets
Cheap certificates that make you hireable for field seasons.
A funded summer research placement
Apply through your department in first and second year. Grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada pay students to do real research.
A driver's licence
Field jobs assume you can drive a truck on gravel.
French
Opens federal science jobs and work in Quebec.
Environmental consulting firms hire many biology graduates. The work is surveys, permits and impact reports for clients who are building something. The paid work starts sooner than an academic career, the hours can be long in field season, and you spend more time writing reports than looking at animals.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
It splits into two seasons. In field season you are up before dawn, out in a truck or a boat, collecting samples or counting things until the light goes, then entering data at night. In office season you are at a desk for weeks: cleaning data, running statistics, writing reports and grant applications, and sitting in meetings about permits. People come for the field season and stay for the desk work, because the desk work is most of the year.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Canada holds roughly a fifth of the world's fresh water and more lakes than every other country combined. Freshwater biology here is not a niche, it is a national industry.
In 1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin at the University of Toronto. Banting was 32 and is still the youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Canada's boreal forest is the breeding ground for billions of North American songbirds each spring. Much of the continent's bird monitoring depends on biologists counting them here.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Life and lab first, then the rest of the field. See every career in science and environment.
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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