Power grids, electronics and telecom. Where the electricity comes from and where the signals go.
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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.
The median pay is about $105,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $70,000 at the lower end to about $165,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$37,000 to $70,000 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.
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
$105,000
Lower end
$70,000
Upper end
$165,000
Job Bank's national median is $50.67 an hour, about $105,000 a year at 40 hours a week, for electrical and electronics engineers together. The lower and upper ends are Job Bank's low and high wages for everyone in the group, $33.65 and $79.23 an hour.
$56 an hour
The median in Saskatchewan, the highest of any province
Quebec follows at $53.85 and Alberta at $50. Prince Edward Island's median is the lowest, at $46.15. Power systems work (protection, high voltage, grid planning) is a specialty employers look for.
Roughly, all in
$37,000 to $70,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Almost all of this is four years of engineering tuition, which runs higher than most degrees. The low end is in province tuition at a cheaper school plus the engineer in training registration, the professional practice exam, and the first year of the professional engineer licence. The high end is expensive tuition and the top of every fee. Paid co op terms at a utility or a contractor can cover a large part of the tuition, and these numbers do not subtract that.
Engineering tuition is higher than most degrees. Co-op terms at a utility can cover a large part of it.
Pension
Defined-benefit at Hydro One, BC (British Columbia) Hydro, Hydro-Québec, Ontario Power Generation and municipal utilities.
Union representation
Engineers at Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation belong to the Society of United Professionals.
Health and dental
Stock and bonuses
At electronics and telecom companies instead of a pension.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Degree, supervised experience, exam, licence.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics and Chemistry are required. Ontario Tech and Lakehead admit from the 70s, Ottawa and Carleton from about 80%, and Toronto and McGill expect the 90s.
Accredited electrical engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
A four-year Bachelor of Engineering or Applied Science at a school accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. You choose a stream in later years: power, electronics, communications or control.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Register with your provincial regulator and work under a licensed engineer. Log your experience.
Professional practice exam
During your EIT (engineer-in-training) years
A law and ethics exam, taken during your training years.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After 4 years (2 in Quebec)
Apply with your experience record and references. Now you can seal drawings and take legal responsibility for designs.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required. Electrical is one of the most math-heavy engineering disciplines.
Physics
Required. Electricity and magnetism units matter most.
Chemistry
Required at most schools.
Computer science
Not required, but you will program microcontrollers in first year.
Only licensed professional engineers can use the title engineer or sign off on designs. Each province has a regulator: PEO (Professional Engineers Ontario), APEGA (the Alberta association) and EGBC (Engineers and Geoscientists BC) are the big three. Licences transfer between provinces easily. Power and building electrical work almost always needs a stamp, so the licence matters more here than in electronics, where many engineers never bother.
Nearly every engineering school offers electrical. Some with strong ties to utilities or electronics:
Ontario
Waterloo, Toronto, McMaster, Queen's, Ottawa, Carleton, Western, Ontario Tech (close to the Darlington nuclear plant).
Quebec
McGill, Polytechnique Montréal, Concordia, Laval, Sherbrooke.
West
UBC (University of British Columbia), Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Manitoba.
Atlantic
Dalhousie, Memorial, New Brunswick.
Quebec students reach university after a 2 year CEGEP (public college) diploma, so the degree takes about 4 years, and the licence comes from the OIQ (Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the Quebec order of engineers) through its own program and exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Take Secondary V math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence, plus Secondary V chemistry and physics. All three are required for the Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies).
Science DEC at a CEGEP
2 years
The 2 year Science program (200.B1). In English at Dawson and the other English colleges. Engineering schools look for its calculus, physics and chemistry courses and your R score (the Quebec college ranking mark).
Bachelor's in electrical engineering
About 4 years
About 4 years for CEGEP graduates. In French at Polytechnique Montréal or ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure). In English at McGill or Concordia.
Become a CPI (candidate to the engineering profession)
Before or right after graduating
Apply to the order once you have 60 university credits or your degree, $180. Joining the program costs $520 plus tax, half price within 6 months of graduating.
24 months of supervised work, then the exam
At least 2 years, at most 5
Work under an engineer you declare to the order. Paid internships done after 60 credits can count. Add 25 to 30 hours of online training ($345) and a multiple choice exam ($285, 60% to pass).
Show French, get the permit
End of the program
A Quebec high school diploma counts, even from an English school. Otherwise you pass, at no charge, the 3 hour exam of the Office québécois de la langue française (the Quebec French language office). Then the order issues your permit.
Concordia University, in English
Electrical Engineering, at least 120 credits.
McGill University, in English
Electrical Engineering, in the electrical and computer engineering department.
Polytechnique Montréal, in French
Génie électrique (electrical engineering), 120 credits, accredited.
ÉTS (École de technologie supérieure), in French
Génie électrique (program 7694), full or part time, with three paid 4 month internships.
Starting from a technical DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
ÉTS admits graduates of the electrical and electronics technology DECs (243 programs) and Computer Science Technology (420.B0) directly. Science DEC graduates first complete a technology bridging program.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Power systems and protection
Grid planning, substations and protective relays. Utilities cannot fill these jobs.
Nuclear
Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power are refurbishing reactors for years to come.
Project Management Professional (PMP)
The usual route into managing projects and budgets.
A master's degree
Needed for chip design, signal processing and research roles.
Co-op at a utility
Hydro One, BC (British Columbia) Hydro and municipal utilities hire their co-op students back.
Tinkering
Arduino, Raspberry Pi, a soldering iron. Shows you like the work, not just the pay.
Programming
Python and C. Almost every electrical job involves some code.
Amateur radio licence
Cheap, and a real signal to telecom employers.
Mines, oil sands plants and northern hydro dams need electrical engineers on site. Many run rotations, such as two weeks in and one week out, with flights and camp paid. It is hard on relationships. People usually do it for a few years, then move to a city office.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
At a utility: reviewing substation drawings, running load studies, and meeting planners about a new subdivision or transmission line. Some days on site in a hard hat checking installations. At an electronics company: designing circuit boards, testing prototypes on a bench, and writing firmware. In consulting: sizing electrical systems for buildings and reviewing contractor submissions. All three involve a lot of documentation.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Electricians install and repair wiring through a paid apprenticeship. Electrical engineers design the systems and rarely touch a wire at work. Different jobs, different training, and neither can legally do the other's work.
In 1965 Hydro-Québec switched on the world's first 735 kilovolt transmission line to carry power from dams hundreds of kilometres north of Montreal. Utilities everywhere copied the idea.
About half of Ontario's electricity comes from the Bruce, Darlington and Pickering nuclear stations: 48% of the output of the grid-connected plants in 2025, says the IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator). Refurbishing and expanding them is one of the biggest sources of electrical engineering jobs in the country.
Alexander Graham Bell worked out the idea for the telephone at his family home in Brantford, Ontario, in 1874 before building it in Boston. Canada's telecom industry has been hiring electrical engineers ever since.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Engineers first, then the rest of the field. See every career in engineering.
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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