Operate on the abdomen, breast, skin and trauma cases. 11 to 15 years of training for one of the broadest jobs in medicine.
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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 $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.
11 to 15 years after high school, on the usual route.
$72,500 to $166,500 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 general surgery figure. Most general surgeons bill the province per operation. Pay varies a lot by province and by billing model: fee-for-service, salary, or a blended plan at teaching hospitals.
About $543,000
Median gross clinical payment, general surgery doctors, 2024 to 2025
CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) counts 2,461 doctors in this group. The middle 60% were paid $274,000 to $790,000. 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 $99,000
A year in Ontario on the scale from July 1, 2025, in postgraduate years 1 to 5 (PGY1 to PGY5), over the 5 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. In Ontario you can be on call in the hospital up to 7 nights in every 28, each shift up to 24 hours.
Billing is not take-home pay
Most general surgeons bill the provincial health plan per operation and visit
Overhead is lower than a family doctor's because most work happens in the hospital, but office rent, staff and malpractice fees still come out of billings.
Roughly, all in
$72,500 to $166,500
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is three years of undergraduate study at $7,000 a year, a three year medical degree at $15,000 a year, and the exam and application fees. The high end is four years of each at the top of the tuition range, plus MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) costs, the MCCQE (Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination), and the Royal College surgery exam. The five or more years of surgical residency are paid work. Two things sit outside these numbers: many people leave medical school with large student debt, and malpractice coverage once you are practising costs about $14,600 a year in Ontario in 2026, though provincial reimbursement covers much of it.
Many people finish medical school with large student debt. Residency pay slows the bleeding but rarely pays it off.
No employer pension
Most surgeons are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
On-call terms
How covering nights and weekends is paid varies by province and hospital. Ask before you accept a position.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association): about $14,600 a year in Ontario for general surgery in 2026. Provinces reimburse part of the fee.
Academic salary option
University hospitals often pay a fixed amount instead of per-case billing, with more research and teaching.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Long, competitive, and mostly decided by exams and the match.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top marks in biology, chemistry, math and English. You need a very high average to get into a pre-med undergrad.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any major works, most take life sciences. Keep a GPA above 3.8, do research and volunteer. Write the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Medical school, the MD (doctor of medicine)
3 to 4 years
Most applicants are turned down. Two years of classes, then clinical rotations. Do surgery electives in your final year to earn reference letters.
General surgery residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service). Paid, supervised. In-hospital call from year one. You operate more every year.
Royal College exam, licence, often a fellowship
1 to 2 years
Pass the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada exam to become FRCSC (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada). Register with your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons. Many add a 1 to 2 year fellowship.
Biology and chemistry
Required for nearly every pre-med path.
Calculus and functions
Physics
Tested on the MCAT (medical school admission test).
English
You will write, present and explain for the rest of your career.
You need a licence from your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons to practise, and specialist certification from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada to work as a surgeon. Hospitals will not grant operating privileges without 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.
General surgery residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service). In English at McGill or in French at Montréal. At McGill year 3 is flexible: research, or clinical rotations if you plan to work in a community hospital.
Royal College exam and CMQ (Collège des médecins du Québec) permit
End of residency
Pass the Royal College exams. 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.
Many new general surgeons add 1 to 2 years of fellowship training.
Colorectal surgery
Bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease.
Surgical oncology
Cancer operations of the abdomen, breast and skin.
Trauma and acute care
Emergency operations at big-city trauma centres.
Minimally invasive and bariatric
Keyhole surgery, including weight-loss surgery.
Pediatric surgery
Two extra years. Operating on children and newborns.
Surgery electives and research in med school
The match is decided by reference letters from surgeons who watched you work.
Stamina
Sports, shift work, anything that proves you can function tired.
Fine hand skills
Instruments, sewing, drawing. Trainable, but a head start helps.
French
Opens Quebec, Ottawa and New Brunswick programs and jobs.
In small towns the general surgeon does everything: caesarean sections, scopes, broken bones, kids, the lot. Some provinces and hospitals in northern and rural Canada offer recruitment incentives, such as signing bonuses, because they struggle to recruit surgeons. The trade-off is being on call much more often, with fewer surgeons to share it.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
6:30 a.m. rounds on your inpatients with the residents. 8:00 first case in the operating room (OR): a keyhole gallbladder, about an hour. Then a hernia, then a bowel cancer resection that runs into the afternoon. Other days are clinic: 20 to 30 patients, consults and follow-ups. On call about one night in four, which can mean an appendix at 2 a.m. or a trauma page at any hour.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In the 2026 residency match, Canadian medical graduates had 93 general surgery spots: about 9 spots for every 10 graduates who ranked it as their first choice.
Under Ontario's residents' agreement, one call shift in the hospital can last 24 hours, plus up to 2 more to hand your patients over. Residents can be scheduled for up to 7 of these nights in every 28.
The specialty exam that makes you a surgeon has a written part and an applied part, and you sit it in your final year of residency. The Royal College runs spring and fall sessions. Fail, and you wait months for the next sitting while you cannot yet practise as a specialist.
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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