Decide where property lines really are. A protected licence, a long qualification, and work that never runs out.
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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 $88,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $60,000 at the lower end to about $126,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
6 to 9 years after high school, on the usual route.
$28,000 to $54,000 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
$88,000
Lower end
$60,000
Upper end
$126,000
Job Bank's national median is $42.20 an hour, about $88,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end is $29.00 an hour and the upper end $60.51. The range covers everyone in the group, licensed or not.
$48.53 an hour
The median in Alberta, about $101,000 a year at 40 hours a week
Yukon is next at $46.75. Ontario's median is $39.36 and Nova Scotia's is the lowest, at $36.06 (Job Bank). The articling years before your licence are paid work, not an unpaid internship.
Roughly, all in
$28,000 to $54,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The bulk of this is four years of a surveying or geomatics degree at $7,000 to $12,000 a year. The low end assumes your employer pays the national and provincial exam fees and gives you study time, which many survey firms do. The high end is a higher tuition university, the subject and law exams plus study courses out of your own pocket, and the first year of licence and insurance once you are registered. The articling period is paid work, so it is income rather than a cost.
Many survey firms pay your exam fees and give you study time. Ask about that before you sign on.
Salary at a survey firm
The normal path. Steady, with overtime through the summer field season.
Government
Provinces, cities and federal departments hire surveyors, usually with a pension.
Owning a firm
Most survey companies are small and owner run, and some surveyors buy into one.
Remote project work
Fly in mining and energy jobs pay a daily living allowance on top of wages.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree, then paid work under a licensed surveyor, then exams. Six to nine years in total.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Grade 12 math is essential. Trigonometry is the daily tool of this job.
Surveying or geomatics degree
4 years
Four years. Geodesy and geomatics engineering at the University of New Brunswick, geomatics engineering at York University or the University of Calgary, or geomatic sciences at Université Laval.
Academic assessment
Months
The Canadian Board of Examiners for Professional Surveyors checks your degree against its syllabus and sets exams for anything missing. Quebec runs its own system.
Articling or competency assessment
2 to 3 years
Paid work under a licensed surveyor while you build a record of real projects.
Professional and law exams, then licence
Final year
Each province tests you on its own survey statutes before it will licence you.
Math
Trigonometry and geometry, used every single day.
Physics
Optics, error and measurement make far more sense with it.
Geography
Maps, scale and coordinates.
Computer studies
Modern survey work is as much data handling as fieldwork.
English
You will read century old deeds and write reports that hold up in court.
Only a licensed land surveyor can decide where a legal property boundary sits. Each province and territory licenses its own surveyors under its own Surveyors Act, so an Ontario Land Surveyor cannot sign a plan in Alberta without qualifying there too. Federal land, meaning national parks, First Nations reserves, the offshore and much of the territories, is surveyed by Canada Lands Surveyors licensed by the Association of Canada Lands Surveyors. Doing boundary work without a licence is an offence.
There are only a handful of programs in the country.
New Brunswick
University of New Brunswick, geodesy and geomatics engineering.
Ontario
York University in Toronto, geomatics engineering.
Alberta
University of Calgary, geomatics engineering.
Quebec
Université Laval in Quebec City, geomatic sciences.
Nova Scotia
The Centre of Geographic Sciences at Nova Scotia Community College in Lawrencetown, a common college starting point.
In Quebec only one degree opens the profession, a 4 year bachelor's at Université Laval in French, and the order sets its own exams.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Keep math and science going. They lead to the college science program the university asks for.
Pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
2 years at a CEGEP (public college) in Natural Sciences or another science program. A geomatics technical diploma can also lead in through a bridge agreement.
Bachelor's in geomatic sciences
4 years
120 credits over 4 years at Université Laval, in French, with up to 3 paid summer internships. It is the only Quebec degree that gives access to the order.
Register with the OAGQ (Ordre des arpenteurs-géomètres du Québec)
Before the exams
The Quebec order of land surveyors. Registration costs $100 plus tax ($114.98) and comes before the exams and the internship.
Three exams and a 1 year internship
About 1 year
Land law, ethics and laws, and a practical exam with an oral part, each passed at 60%. The paid internship under a surveyor can come before or after.
Take the oath
Once done
The final step. Ceremonies are held each September at the order's congress, or by video three other times a year.
The geomatic sciences degree is taught only in French, and students who are not francophone must show their French or take French courses. The order also needs proof of French before it admits you. A Quebec high school diploma (DES, Diploma of Secondary Studies) from 1985 to 1986 or later counts, even from an English school. So do 3 years of full-time study in French. Otherwise you pass the exam of the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française, the French language office).
Things you don't need, but that help.
Canada Lands Surveyor
Lets you survey federal land, reserves and the territories. Often held alongside a provincial licence.
A second province
Surveyors licensed in two or three provinces are rare.
Hydrographic surveying
Measuring lake and sea beds for ports, cables and nautical charts.
Mine surveying
Underground and open pit work. Long shifts.
A driver's licence
Every survey crew drives to site. Without one you will not get hired.
A summer on a survey crew
The single best thing you can do before or during the degree.
Drone and laser scanning experience
Firms are moving fast to aerial and scanned capture, and few staff know it well.
Comfort outdoors
Blackflies, cold mornings, bush and mud. If that sounds fine, the job suits you.
Boundary surveying is part detective work. You read deeds written a century ago, hunt for iron bars and stone mounds left by surveyors who died before your grandparents were born, and decide which evidence wins. Experienced surveyors are called as expert witnesses in property disputes. If you like history and argument as much as measuring, aim at this part of the job.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Half the job is outside and half is at a desk. Field days start early: load the truck, drive to site, set up the total station or satellite receiver, find the old survey monuments, measure, then mark new points for builders. Office days mean research in land registry records, calculations, drafting the plan and checking a junior's numbers. Once licensed you also meet clients, quote jobs and carry the legal responsibility for everything the crew measured.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Under the Criminal Code, pulling out or altering a boundary mark set by a land surveyor can mean up to 5 years in prison. A surveyor may lift one during survey work, but must put it back exactly where it was.
From the 1870s, the Dominion Lands survey divided the farmland of the Prairies into square townships of 36 sections, each about 260 hectares. That grid is why prairie roads and fields still run in straight lines and right angles.
Any ditch, building, cable or pipeline within 3 metres of the Canada and US boundary needs approval from the International Boundary Commission, which has maintained the line for more than a century.
Job Bank counted about 7,200 land surveyors working in Canada in 2023, and 30% of them were 50 or older.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Architecture and planning first, then the rest of the field. See every career in architecture and design.
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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