Run the tests that keep water, food, fuel and medicine safe. Two years of college (three in Quebec) and you are working.
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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 $62,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $44,000 at the lower end to about $99,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$9,500 to $13,000 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
$62,000
Lower end
$44,000
Upper end
$99,000
Job Bank's national median for chemical laboratory technicians is $29.80 an hour, about $62,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end is $21 an hour and the upper end $47.69.
$34.00 an hour
The median in Saskatchewan, about $71,000 a year at 40 hours a week
New Brunswick is next at $32.81. Ontario's median is $30.00, and British Columbia's is the lowest, at $24.00 (Job Bank). Industrial sites that run around the clock pay shift premiums and overtime on top.
Roughly, all in
$9,500 to $13,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Two years of college tuition and fees is almost the whole story, about $4,400 a year at Seneca, plus books, lab supplies and a pair of safety shoes and glasses. The low end is an Ontario college diploma with second hand books. The high end adds new books each term, higher fees at some colleges and the optional technician certification at the end. There is no licence to buy, which is why this stays one of the cheapest doors into science work in Canada.
Total cost is usually under $13,000. This is one of the cheapest routes into a science job in Canada.
Regular hours in most labs
Testing labs and research labs usually run days.
Union coverage
Common in water utilities, hospitals, refineries and government labs.
Shift and overtime premiums
Industrial plants run around the clock and pay extra for it.
Employer paid upgrading
Many labs will pay for instrument courses once you are on staff.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short, cheap and practical. You are hired on what you can actually do at a bench.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Chemistry and math are the entry requirements at most colleges. Grade 12 English too.
College diploma
2 years
Two years, four semesters (three years in Quebec), in a chemical laboratory technician or chemical sciences program. Half your hours are in a lab.
Co-op or field placement
Most programs include one. It is the main way graduates get hired.
First job
Year 1
Analyst at a testing lab, water plant, food plant or research group. Your first year is learning the instruments and the documentation properly.
Certify or specialise
After 2 to 3 years
Apply for technician certification, or train on a specific instrument to become the person who owns it.
Chemistry
Required for admission almost everywhere.
Math
Dilutions, unit conversions and basic statistics every day.
Biology
Useful for food, water and pharmaceutical labs.
Computer skills
Lab data lives in spreadsheets and lab software.
No province requires a licence to work as a laboratory technician. What some employers look for is voluntary certification through a provincial technology association, such as the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists, which grants the Certified Technician (C.Tech) title after a review of your diploma and work experience and a professional practice exam. Note that a medical laboratory technologist, who works on patient samples in a hospital, is a different and genuinely regulated job with a longer program.
In Quebec the lab technician program is a 3 year CEGEP (public college) program after Secondary V, longer than the 2 year diplomas common elsewhere.
Finish Secondary V with math and chemistry
High school
The programs ask for Secondary V math in the Technical and Scientific or the Science sequence, plus Secondary V chemistry.
Laboratory Technology DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
3 years
Two streams: Analytical Chemistry (210.AB) and Biotechnology (210.AA). Each is a 3 year program at a CEGEP (public college).
Where to study
Analytical chemistry at colleges including Ahuntsic, Jonquière, Lévis, Shawinigan and Valleyfield. Biotechnology at colleges including Ahuntsic, Lévis, Outaouais, Sherbrooke and Saint-Hyacinthe. In English, Dawson College offers Analytical Chemistry.
Internships
During the program
Internships are part of the program. At Dawson, paid work-study terms can add up to 6 months of industry experience before you graduate.
Start work
After the DEC
You do not need a permit to work as a technician. Quebec's median wage for chemical technologists and technicians is $29.70 an hour (2023 to 2025), and the outlook to 2029 is very good.
The professional technologist title, if you want it
Optional
Joining the OTPQ (Ordre des technologues professionnels du Québec, the Quebec order of technologists) gives you the title. You can do the work without it.
A Quebec law adopted in April 2026 reserves some laboratory chemistry work to members of the Ordre des chimistes du Québec (the Quebec order of chemists). The law says a regulation will set which of those tasks professional technologists in chemistry can also do. Check with employers how this applies to your job.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Instrument ownership
Become the site expert on a chromatograph or a spectrometer. That person does not get laid off.
Quality systems training
Understanding accreditation standards moves you toward quality assurance roles.
Good manufacturing practice training
Opens pharmaceutical plant jobs.
Bridging to a degree
Some universities give diploma graduates credit toward a chemistry degree. Ask before you enrol.
Transport of dangerous goods and hazard communication training
Short courses that most labs want on file.
A driver's licence
Environmental labs send technicians out to collect samples.
Willingness to work nights
Plant labs run three shifts and pay for the awkward ones.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Log in the samples that arrived overnight, then run the daily calibration and quality control checks on your instruments. After that it is a queue: weigh, dilute, extract, inject, read. You record every step, because in an accredited lab an unrecorded step did not happen. If a result fails a control, you stop and work out whether it was the sample, the method or the machine. By late afternoon you are entering results and getting tomorrow's batch ready.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Since legal sales began in 2018, no lot or batch of cannabis can be sold in Canada until it has been tested for its THC (the main active compound) and CBD (another plant compound) content in its final form.
Job Bank counted about 26,300 chemical technologists and technicians working in Canada in 2023. Almost a third were 50 or older.
Seneca's Chemical Laboratory Technician diploma is 4 semesters, and its books and supplies come to about $1,400 for the whole program.
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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