Get hired in a week with no schooling, learn a trade on the line, and take the skill anywhere in the country.
Click through it
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.
An apprenticeship: you are hired by a sponsor, paid while you learn on the job, and go to class for a few weeks at a time. Every fact here is from Skilled Trades Ontario (STO) and the Ontario government. See every Ontario trade side by side
You are paid from your first day. Over the 5,280 hours on the job, even at the minimum wage you would earn at least $94,776 before tax while you train, and most sponsors pay more as your skills grow.
The trade on Skilled Trades Ontario's site(opens in a new tab)
You are paid from your first day. Over the 2,640 hours on the job, even at the minimum wage you would earn at least $47,388 before tax while you train, and most sponsors pay more as your skills grow.
The trade on Skilled Trades Ontario's site(opens in a new tab)
You are paid from your first day. Over the 3,600 hours on the job, even at the minimum wage you would earn at least $64,620 before tax while you train, and most sponsors pay more as your skills grow.
The trade on Skilled Trades Ontario's site(opens in a new tab)
Still in high school? In Grade 11 or 12, with at least 14 credits and age 15 or older, you can start an apprenticeship through co-op placements and earn credits at the same time. Ask your school's OYAP recruiter, guidance counsellor or co-op teacher. Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP)(opens in a new tab)
Not ready to find a sponsor? Free pre-apprenticeship programs (up to a year at a college or community agency, tools and books covered, with a work placement) get you ready and in front of employers. Employment Ontario helps you apply. Pre-apprenticeship training(opens in a new tab)
Ontario sets no percentage of full pay for apprentices. Your sponsor agrees your wage with you, and it can never be below the minimum wage: $17.95 an hour from 1 October 2026. Source (opens in a new tab)
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 $37,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $31,000 at the lower end to about $52,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
Up to 3 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
$230 to $18,700 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence 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
$37,000
Lower end
$31,000
Upper end
$52,000
Job Bank's national median is $18 an hour, about $37,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends are Job Bank's low and high wages for everyone in the group, $15 and $25 an hour.
Often the minimum wage
$17.95 an hour in Ontario from October 1, 2026
Prep cooks and first jobs on the line are often paid at or near the minimum wage, which each province sets. Ontario's was $17.60 until September 30, 2026.
Roughly, all in
$230 to $18,700
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the one paper most kitchens ask for: a food handler certificate, your own knives and proper kitchen shoes. Everything after that you learn in a paid kitchen. The high end is a two year college culinary diploma at the top of the tuition range with a fuller knife roll. The diploma is optional, so almost the entire spread is a choice about how quickly you want to move up rather than a cost of entry.
You can start with only the food handler certificate, so this is one of the cheapest careers on this site to enter.
Job Bank reports about 57% of cooks get at least one non-wage benefit.
Staff meals
Almost every kitchen feeds you on shift.
Health and dental
Common in hotels, hospitals and schools, rare in small restaurants.
Room and board
Standard at work camps, resorts and remote lodges.
Skills training on the job
Good chefs teach you butchery, sauces and baking on the clock.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
You can start this month. School is optional and comes later if you want it.
Get a food handler certificate
1 day
A short online course your local public health unit recognises. Most kitchens want it before your first shift.
Get hired
Days to weeks
Dishwasher or prep cook. Walk in with a resume in the afternoon between lunch and dinner service. Many cooks started at 16.
Learn the stations
1 to 3 years
Salad, grill, sauté, then working the pass. This is the real training and it happens on shift.
Apprentice or take a diploma
1 to 3 years
Optional. A cook apprenticeship pays you while you work and sends you to school in blocks. A college diploma runs 1 to 2 years.
Red Seal Cook
About 3 years
Pass the interprovincial exam. In Ontario the apprenticeship is 6,000 hours: 5,280 on the job plus 720 in school.
Hospitality or culinary class
Many high schools have a working kitchen and a co-op placement.
Math
Scaling recipes, costing a dish, counting stock.
Chemistry
Sauces, bread and braising are chemistry you can eat.
Any part-time restaurant job
Even dish pit time counts as kitchen experience on a resume.
Anyone can be hired as a cook. Cook is a Red Seal trade designated in every province and territory, but it is compulsory nowhere, which means you do not need the certificate to work. Food safety rules are set for the kitchen, not for each cook, which is why kitchens ask new hires for a food handler certificate. Getting it anyway is how you move into hotels, hospitals, camps and unionised kitchens. British Columbia calls the top level Professional Cook 3 and Quebec calls it Cook Level 2.
Only if you want the diploma route. None of these are required.
Ontario
George Brown College and Humber Polytechnic in Toronto, Niagara College in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Alberta
SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) in Calgary and NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) in Edmonton.
British Columbia
Vancouver Community College and Camosun College in Victoria.
Quebec
The tourism and hotel institute in Montreal, known as ITHQ (Institut de tourisme et d'hôtellerie du Québec).
Quebec trains cooks through a DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) at a vocational centre, and certifies working cooks at two levels, Cook Level 1 and Cook Level 2.
Secondary IV courses
From age 16
The DEP in Professional Cooking takes a high school diploma, or age 16 with Secondary IV language, second language and math. From 18, the general development test is another way in.
DEP in Professional Cooking (5311, or 5811 in English)
About 13 to 16 months
1,470 hours of cooking, called Cuisine in French. Taught in every region of Quebec in French, and at four centres in English.
Food handler course
6 hours
The MAPAQ (Quebec food ministry) course for anyone who prepares food: 6 hours, a 30 minute exam, 60% to pass. It is valid for life and belongs to you, not your employer.
Cook Level 1 certificate
About 8 to 12 months
Quebec's certificate for skills shown at work. Level 1 covers about 8 months of essential skills, plus 4 months for an extra skill.
Cook Level 2 and the Red Seal
About 20 months
Level 2 takes about 20 months of essential skills. Only Level 2 cooks can go on to the interprovincial Red Seal.
The Professional Cooking DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies, 5811) in English is taught at:
St. Pius X Career Centre, Montreal
English-Montréal School Board.
Pearson Adult and Career Centre, Montreal
Lester-B.-Pearson School Board.
Brome-Missisquoi Campus, Cowansville
Eastern Townships School Board.
Centre de formation professionnelle du Nunavik
Kativik school board, in Nord-du-Québec.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Red Seal Cook certificate
The credential hotels, hospitals and unions actually check for.
Butchery and charcuterie skills
Whole-animal butchery is rare and restaurants look for it.
Baking and pastry
A separate Red Seal trade. Cooks who can also bake are hard to replace.
Camp and remote work
Mines, oil sites and lodges provide room and board.
Food safety supervisor training
A step up from the basic certificate and often required to run a shift.
Knife speed
Practise at home. Being fast on prep is how you get promoted off the dish pit.
A driver's licence
Opens up camp work, catering and suburban kitchens.
A second language
Many Canadian kitchens run in a mix of English, French, Spanish and Punjabi.
Skills Canada competition
The national trade competition has a cooking category and employers notice medals.
Work camps in Alberta, northern British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the territories feed hundreds of workers a day. You fly in, work a set rotation, live in a room they pay for, and your meals are provided. With room and food covered, there is little to spend money on. The trade-off is weeks away from home, early starts and a menu with no creativity in it.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Arrive around 2pm for dinner. Check the prep list, break down deliveries, chop, portion, make stocks and sauces for three or four hours. Service starts at 5pm and runs like a sprint until 9 or 10pm with tickets stacking up and a chef calling the pass. Then break down your station, scrub, restock and write tomorrow's prep list. You leave near midnight. Hospital, school and camp kitchens run daytime hours instead.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The same national program that covers electricians and welders covers cooks, and it is designated in all thirteen provinces and territories. A Red Seal cook can move province to province without writing another exam.
Job Bank puts the median cook wage in Yukon at about $28 an hour, and in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut at $25, against $18 for Canada as a whole.
A lot of Canadian chefs began washing dishes as teenagers. It is the one kitchen job that needs no experience at all, and cooks watch who works hard back there when a spot on the line opens up.
About 171,700 people worked as cooks in Canada in 2023. Job Bank expects a moderate risk of a cook shortage nationally through 2033.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Kitchen first, then the rest of the field. See every career in food and hospitality.
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.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.