Analyse evidence in a government lab and defend the result in court. A small field, and the jobs go to chemists and biologists.
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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 $80,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $50,000 at the lower end to about $137,000 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 $62,000 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 Quebec. 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
$80,000
Lower end
$50,000
Upper end
$137,000
Job Bank's forensic chemist page gives a national median of $38.46 an hour, about $80,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends ($24.00 and $65.93 an hour) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group. Almost all of these jobs are government, so pay follows a public service grid with steps rather than negotiation.
$43.74 an hour
The median in Alberta, the highest in Canada
Newfoundland and Labrador is close behind at $43.69. Ontario's median is $39.49, Quebec's is $38.88 and New Brunswick's is the lowest, at $36.83. Most people enter below the scientist level and work up.
Roughly, all in
$28,000 to $62,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a four year science degree at the cheaper end of Canadian tuition, about $7,000 a year, and getting hired straight out of it. The high end is the same degree at a pricier school plus a master's degree, which most labs now expect, though many master's students are paid through teaching or research work that cancels out much of the tuition. The security clearance and the in house training after hiring cost you nothing. What this number hides is the real barrier: very few lab positions open each year, so the expensive part is often the months or years of applying.
The cost here is not money. It is applying repeatedly for a small number of positions.
RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) forensic labs
Ottawa, Edmonton and Surrey, serving police everywhere except Ontario and Quebec.
Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences
Labs in Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie covering biology, chemistry, toxicology, firearms and documents.
Quebec's forensic science and legal medicine laboratory
The provincial lab in Montreal.
Coroner and medical examiner offices
Toxicology and death investigation support.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Labs hire scientists, not fans of crime shows. Your degree should be a real science degree.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Chemistry, biology and math. A clean record matters, because every job needs a security clearance.
Science degree
4 years
Chemistry, biochemistry or biology, or a dedicated forensic science degree that still has a strong chemistry or biology core. In Ontario, Laurentian, Trent, Windsor and Ontario Tech all offer forensic science degrees. In Quebec, only UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) does.
Master's degree
2 years
Not always required, but competitive hires often have one. It also gives you the instrument experience labs want.
Apply and wait
1 to 3 years
Openings are posted rarely and draw many applicants. Many people work in an environmental or testing lab while applying.
In-house training and court qualification
1 to 2 years
Once hired you train on the lab's own methods, pass competency tests, then do mock court before you testify for real.
Chemistry
Toxicology, drugs and trace evidence are all chemistry.
Biology
Required for the genetic evidence side.
Math and statistics
Evidence is reported as probability. You will be cross-examined on it.
English and public speaking
You have to explain your work to a jury that knows no science.
Outside Quebec there is no forensic scientist licence. In Quebec, chemistry lab work requires membership in the Ordre des chimistes du Québec (the Quebec order of chemists). Control comes from the laboratory instead: labs hold international accreditation, every method is validated, every result is reviewed by a second scientist, and you personally have to be qualified by the court as an expert before your opinion counts. The Canadian Society of Forensic Science is the national professional body and runs sections in biology, chemistry, toxicology, documents, firearms and more.
Quebec has its own provincial lab, the LSJML (Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, the Quebec forensic science and legal medicine lab), and the only forensic science bachelor's in the province, taught in French.
Finish Secondary V
High school
Take the Secondary V math and science courses that your CEGEP (public college) asks for its science program.
Science or lab DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
A science DEC, or a laboratory technology DEC in chemistry or biotechnology, gets you into the forensic science degree.
Forensic science bachelor's at UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières)
3 years
93 credits, full time, in French. Streams in chemical, biological, digital and physical traces. The chemical stream takes 15 students a year.
Join the Ordre des chimistes du Québec (the Quebec order of chemists)
Needed for chemistry work. Since April 2026, Quebec graduates no longer need 2 years of experience first. The file review is $295, half price within 90 days of graduating.
Apply to the provincial lab
The LSJML (the Quebec forensic lab) in Montreal, run by the public security ministry, hires specialists who analyse evidence and testify in court. The Quebec government lists pay for the forensic expertise specialist job at $57,748 to $107,405 a year as of 1 April 2026.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Biology and genetic evidence
Identifying body fluids and building DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic code) profiles.
Toxicology
Drugs and alcohol in blood and tissue, including impaired driving cases.
Drug chemistry
Identifying seized substances. High case volume, steady work.
Firearms and trace evidence
Ballistics, tool marks, fibres, paint and glass. Small, specialised sections.
Instrument experience
Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry from a co-op or a research project.
Statistics
Forensic reporting is increasingly about likelihood, not certainty.
A spotless record
Security clearance is a real gate, and it looks back at your past.
Backup plan skills
Environmental, food or pharmaceutical lab experience keeps you employed while you wait for an opening.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Nothing like television. You are in a lab, working through a case queue, one exhibit at a time, under a chain of custody log that never stops. You prepare samples, run instruments, interpret the output, and write a report that a defence lawyer will attack line by line. Peer review takes a chunk of every week. A few times a year you spend a day in a courtroom explaining, slowly and plainly, what your result does and does not prove.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
As of October 2026, Canada's National DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic code) Data Bank held 507,567 profiles from convicted offenders and 269,468 from crime scenes, and had made 110,421 matches.
That is how Ontario describes its Centre of Forensic Sciences. It has been accredited since 1993 and covers biology, chemistry, documents, firearms and toxicology.
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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