Deliver babies and care for families through pregnancy and the weeks after. On call around the clock, and paid well for it.
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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 $97,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $50,000 at the lower end to about $125,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$35,000 to $50,000 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
$97,000
Lower end
$50,000
Upper end
$125,000
Job Bank (the Government of Canada job site) national figures for 2024: $24.09 to $60.26 an hour, with a median of $46.81, turned into a year at 40 hours a week. In Ontario, midwives are self-employed but paid by the province through their practice group, on a grid that rises with experience. Quebec pays midwives a salary. Pay varies by province.
$49.43 an hour
The median in Manitoba, about $103,000 a year
New Brunswick is close behind at $49.34, and Alberta is the lowest at $38.28. Full-time pay assumes a full caseload of clients as their main midwife, plus attending births for your partners' clients. Part-time caseloads are paid in proportion.
Roughly, all in
$35,000 to $50,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The four year Bachelor of Midwifery is nearly the whole cost, 7,000 to 10,000 a year, plus books and equipment, the national registration examination at about 1,000, and a first year of provincial registration. Ontario registration alone runs about 2,750 a year and continues for your whole career. Placements often send you to another city for months at a time, so you may end up paying rent in two places and running a car, which is not counted in these numbers. Programs are small and competitive, and many students pay for an extra year of prerequisites before they get in.
Placements often send you to another city for months at a time. Budget for rent in two places and a car.
Little that comes automatically
Self-employed in most provinces: no employer pension, no paid sick days, and you pay your own licence and a share of the practice's rent and staff. Ontario's funding includes some money toward benefits.
Malpractice insurance covered
In Ontario, the province pays it.
Salary and benefits in Quebec and a few hospital jobs
Rarer than self-employed practice.
Real time off
Practice partners cover each other, so off-call weeks are truly off.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Outside Quebec: a four-year degree you enter straight from high school. No nursing degree required. Quebec has its own route: tap Quebec route to add it.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, English. Programs are small and competitive; high 80s helps.
Bachelor of Midwifery
4 years
A 4-year degree. About half of it is clinical placement with practising midwives, where you attend dozens of births before you graduate.
CMRE (Canadian Midwifery Registration Examination)
After graduation
A national multiple-choice exam, written online with a remote proctor, offered twice a year in spring and fall. Quebec graduates do not write it.
Register with your provincial college
A few weeks
For example the College of Midwives of Ontario. New registrants have a period with extra oversight.
Join a practice group
Right after
You do not apply to a hospital. You join or start a midwifery practice, which holds the hospital privileges.
Biology
Required.
Chemistry
Required at most programs.
English
Required. Programs also interview.
Social sciences
Midwifery is about people as much as medicine.
A second language
Clients come from everywhere.
Midwife is a protected title, regulated in every province and territory. You register with your provincial college, for example the College of Midwives of Ontario, and registration transfers between provinces. Midwives are primary care providers: they order tests, prescribe some medications, and admit and discharge their own clients at hospitals without a doctor signing off. They refer to an obstetrician when a pregnancy becomes high risk.
Only six recognized programs in the country.
McMaster, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU, formerly Ryerson)
Ontario
UBC (University of British Columbia)
British Columbia
Mount Royal University
Calgary, Alberta
University of Manitoba
Manitoba
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Quebec, in French
Quebec has one midwifery program, a French-language bachelor's at UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), and finishing it gives you the permit with no national exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With chemistry and the math and science you need for college science courses at CEGEP (public college).
DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 to 3 years
Any DEC, as long as it includes college human biology and organic chemistry. Adults can apply instead on 5 years of full-time perinatal work plus related training.
Apply to UQTR
Winter before you start
French is required and places are reserved for Quebec residents. Selection is 50% grades, 30% the Casper test and 20% a recorded video interview. Deadline March 1.
Bachelor's in midwifery practice
About 3 years
132 credits over 8 terms, about 3 years since 2024. Half the terms are placements, 2,012 to 2,404 hours at births at home, in birthing centres and in hospitals.
Join the OSFQ (Ordre des sages-femmes du Québec)
After graduating
The Quebec order of midwives. It says the UQTR degree gives access to the profession with no further conditions. You renew each year between February 15 and March 31.
For 2026 to 2027, Quebec offers grants of up to $30,000 each to full-time UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) midwifery students. In return you work at least 3 years, 28 hours a week or more, in Bas-Saint-Laurent, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Côte-Nord, Gaspésie, Nunavik or the Cree territory of James Bay. You apply to the health facility where you plan to work, before your final year.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Newborn resuscitation and emergency skills
Required refreshers every few years, and worth doing early.
Indigenous midwifery
Community-based programs in the North and on some First Nations train and support Indigenous midwives to bring birth back to their communities.
Expanded prescribing
Some provinces let midwives with extra courses prescribe more drugs and order more tests.
Master's degree
Teaching, research and policy work.
Doula training or birth work
Attend births as a support person before you apply. Programs notice.
Volunteer with new parents or in women's health
A driver's licence and a reliable car
You will drive to someone's home at 3 in the morning.
Physical and emotional stamina
Births are long and you are awake for all of it.
A few hospitals employ midwives on salary, and remote and Indigenous communities in the North fund midwifery so families do not have to fly out to give birth. Those posts often come with housing, and the rhythm is different from an urban practice group.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
There is no typical day, only on call and off call. On call, a pager can go at any hour, and a birth might take 2 hours or 20. Between births you run a clinic day of 30 to 60 minute prenatal and postpartum visits, plus home visits to newborns in their first week. Off call, you are truly off, usually for a week or more, because your practice partners cover.
The good
The hard parts
Like the field but not this exact job?
Things people don't tell you.
The Association of Ontario Midwives says midwives attend approximately 20% of all births in the province, from clinics in 100 communities, from Attawapiskat to Windsor.
In Ontario you do not need a doctor's referral to see a midwife, and the provincial health plan pays for the care, so clients pay nothing.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Nursing and patient care first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
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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