Operate on the heart: bypasses, valves, transplants. Six years of residency, very high pay, and one of the tightest job markets in Canadian medicine.
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The median pay is about $419,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $144,000 at the lower end to about $767,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
13 to 16 years after high school, on the usual route.
$73,000 to $165,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a licence or registration before you can work.
Good 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
$419,000
Lower end
$144,000
Upper end
$767,000
These are Job Bank (the Government of Canada job site) figures for all surgeons together, a year, from 2023 to 2024. Job Bank pools every surgical specialty in one group, so this is not a cardiac surgery figure.
About $652,000
Median gross clinical payment, thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons together, 2024 to 2025
CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) counts 513 doctors in this group. The middle 60% were paid $260,000 to $1,008,000. This is billing before office, staff and other practice costs, not take-home pay. Read from CIHI's data tables, downloaded in a browser with Claude in Chrome on 6 November 2026, because cihi.ca refuses our checker.
$73,000 to $104,000
A year in Ontario from July 1, 2025, in postgraduate years 1 to 6 (PGY1 to PGY6), over the 6 years of residency
Set by the 2023 to 2026 agreement between PARO (Professional Association of Residents of Ontario) and Ontario's teaching hospitals. Other provinces have their own agreements and pay scales. Expect 70 to 80 hour weeks and overnight call in the cardiac intensive care unit.
About 150 surgeons
The CMA (Canadian Medical Association) counted 149 cardiac surgeons in Canada in January 2019
A job appears when a surgeon retires or a centre grows. Some years only a handful open nationally. New grads often take extra fellowships, work in the US, or wait.
Roughly, all in
$73,000 to $165,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is three undergraduate years at a cheaper province's tuition, a three year medical degree, one sitting of the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test), and the licensing and specialty exams. The high end is four undergraduate years and four medical school years at the most expensive rates, plus several application cycles and interview travel to exam fees. Residency and the extra fellowship years are paid work, not tuition, so they are not counted here. Typical debt at the end of medical school is $80,000 to $150,000, and malpractice fees of tens of thousands a year start only once you are practising.
Typical debt at the end of medical school is $80,000 to $150,000. Add 1 to 2 fellowship years at roughly resident pay.
No employer pension
Most surgeons are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
Academic salary plans
Nearly all cardiac surgery happens at university hospitals, which often pay a blended salary for research and teaching.
On-call stipends
Extra pay for covering the heart centre overnight.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association), partly reimbursed by provinces.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Six years of residency after medical school, entered directly from the match.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top marks in biology, chemistry, math and English. A very high average is the entry ticket.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any major, usually life sciences. High GPA, research, volunteering. Write the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Medical school, the MD (doctor of medicine)
3 to 4 years
Most applicants are turned down. Cardiac surgery electives and research in your final year are essential for the match.
Cardiac surgery residency
6 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service). Paid, supervised. Time in general surgery, cardiology and intensive care before you spend years in the heart operating room.
Royal College exam, licence, fellowship
1 to 2 years
Pass the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada exam, register with your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons. Almost everyone does a 1 to 2 year fellowship.
Biology and chemistry
Required for nearly every pre-med path.
Physics
Blood flow, pressure and pumps. The heart is a plumbing problem.
Calculus and functions
English
You will explain life-or-death choices to families under stress.
You need a licence from your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons to practise, and specialist certification in cardiac surgery from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Hospitals grant operating privileges only with both. Licences transfer between provinces with paperwork and fees.
In Quebec you apply to medical school straight from CEGEP (public college), with no bachelor's degree first.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math (Technical and Scientific, or Science option), chemistry and physics. These are the entry courses for the CEGEP (public college) science program.
Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
A 2 year CEGEP (public college) program (200.B1), offered in English at Dawson and the other English colleges. Take the biology and chemistry courses medical schools ask for.
Medical school, straight from CEGEP
4 to 5 years
No bachelor's degree needed. McGill and Montréal start with a 1 year preparatory year, Laval and Sherbrooke do not. You need a top R-score (the CEGEP ranking score), the Casper test and interviews.
Cardiac surgery residency
6 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service), straight from medical school. At Montréal it runs in French and covers adult and child heart surgery, with rotations in cardiology, intensive care and cardiac anesthesia.
Royal College exam and CMQ (Collège des médecins du Québec) permit
End of residency
Pass the Royal College exam. The CMQ, the Quebec college of physicians, then issues your permit and specialist certificate once you show French. A Quebec high school diploma counts.
Get a hospital position
Before you start
Every specialist working in a Quebec hospital must hold a spot in its PEM (plan d'effectifs médicaux, the medical staffing plan). The health ministry approves how many each hospital gets.
Montréal and Laval set a minimum R-score (the CEGEP ranking score) of 33 for CEGEP applicants in 2026. McGill's Med-P year is only for recent CEGEP graduates.
Things you don't need, but that help.
With so few jobs, most new grads add 1 to 2 fellowship years to stand out.
Heart transplant and mechanical support
Transplants and implanted heart pumps at a few centres.
Aortic surgery
Repairing the biggest artery in the body, often through a catheter.
Minimally invasive valve surgery
Replacing valves through small incisions or a catheter, the fastest growing area.
Congenital (children's) heart surgery
A tiny group of surgeons at children's hospitals.
Published research
Cardiac surgery programs expect it. Many residents do research years.
Electives at several cardiac programs
With 12 spots nationally in the 2025 match, programs match people they know.
Calm under pressure
Bleeding from the heart does not wait for you to think.
Willingness to move
Your first job may be in any province, or the US.
Heart disease is a leading cause of death, but more and more of it is treated by cardiologists with stents and catheters instead of open surgery. That, plus the huge cost of a heart operating room and intensive care team, means centres add surgeons slowly. Expect to compete for every opening and to be flexible about where you live. Job Bank rates prospects good or very good for surgeons as a group, but that rating pools every surgical specialty.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
6:30 a.m. rounds in the cardiac ICU (intensive care unit). 7:30 first case in the operating room (OR): a triple bypass on a stopped heart, 4 to 5 hours, then often a valve replacement after lunch. Late afternoon is checking on the morning's patients and seeing tomorrow's. On call, a torn aorta or a failing bypass can mean going back in at midnight.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In 1950, Toronto surgeon Wilfred Bigelow and his team built one of the first pacemakers while researching how to cool the body for heart surgery. His cooling technique made early open-heart operations possible.
For most operations a heart-lung machine takes over pumping and breathing, and the surgeon stops the heart with a cold potassium solution. It restarts when warm blood flows back, usually on its own.
Job Bank's median for all surgeons is about $508,600 a year in Alberta, against $404,000 in Ontario and $397,300 in Quebec. These are gross billings, before office and practice costs.
Dr. Pierre Grondin performed Canada's first heart transplant at the Montreal Heart Institute in May 1968, months after the world's first in South Africa.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Surgeons first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked November 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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