The eye surgeon. Cataracts, glaucoma, retina, lasers. One of the most competitive specialties in Canada, with better hours than most surgery.
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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.
12 to 15 years after high school, on the usual route.
$73,000 to $167,000 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.
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 an ophthalmology figure. Cataract surgeons bill per case and do many a day.
About $861,000
Median gross clinical payment, ophthalmology doctors, 2024 to 2025
CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) counts 1,399 doctors in this group. The middle 60% were paid $390,000 to $1,553,000. 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 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. Call is lighter than in other surgical programs, but eye emergencies still come in at night.
About $508,600 a year
The median for all surgeons in Alberta, the highest of the large provinces
Ontario's median for all surgeons is about $404,000 and Quebec's about $397,300. Ophthalmologists bill per operation, and staff, lasers and imaging machines are paid out of billings, so take-home pay is lower.
Roughly, all in
$73,000 to $167,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a three year undergraduate degree and a three year medical school at the cheaper end of Canadian tuition, plus the MCAT (medical school admission test), the MCCQE (the national medical licensing exam) and the Royal College certification exam. The high end is four years of each at the priciest schools with the full range of fees. Residency and the usual one or two fellowship years are paid at roughly resident wages, so they add no tuition. The hundreds of thousands of dollars of lasers and imaging gear quoted for a clinic is a business cost you take on later, with a business loan, not a cost of qualifying.
Typical debt at the end of medical school is $80,000 to $150,000. Fellowships add 1 to 2 years at roughly resident pay.
No employer pension
Many ophthalmologists are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
Private-pay work
Laser vision correction and premium lenses are paid by the patient, outside the provincial plan.
Predictable hours
Mostly daytime clinic and scheduled surgery, with lighter call than other surgeons.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association), in a lower fee band than most surgery.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Same road as every surgeon, and one of the hardest matches to win.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top marks in biology, chemistry, math and English. A very high average is the entry ticket.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any major, usually life sciences. High GPA, research, volunteering. Write the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Medical school, the MD (doctor of medicine)
3 to 4 years
Admission is very competitive, and most applicants are turned down. Ophthalmology electives and research in your final year decide the match.
Ophthalmology residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service). Paid, supervised. Clinic, lasers, then hundreds of cataract operations under supervision.
Royal College exam, licence, often a fellowship
1 to 2 years
Pass the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada exam, 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.
Physics
Optics is physics. Lenses, lasers and light are the whole job.
Calculus and functions
English
Tested on the MCAT (medical school admission test), and you will explain a lot to worried patients.
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 an ophthalmologist. Optometrists test vision and prescribe glasses after a 4-year optometry degree; only ophthalmologists are medical doctors who operate. 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.
Ophthalmology residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service), as in the rest of Canada. Montréal, Laval and Sherbrooke train in French. Many add a fellowship after.
Royal College exam and CMQ (Collège des médecins du Québec) permit
End of residency
Pass the Royal College exam. 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.
Retina
Injections and surgery for diabetes and macular degeneration. Very busy.
Glaucoma
Pressure in the eye. Lasers, drops and drainage surgery.
Cornea and refractive
Corneal transplants and laser vision correction, often private-pay.
Oculoplastics
Eyelids, tear ducts and the eye socket. Some cosmetic work.
Pediatric
Lazy eye and crossed eyes in children.
Ophthalmology electives and research in med school
With few spots, reference letters from eye surgeons decide the match.
Steady hands
Cataract surgery happens inside an eye 2.5 centimetres across, under a microscope.
Comfort with technology
Lasers, imaging and surgical machines change every few years.
Business sense
Many ophthalmologists own or share a clinic with expensive equipment.
Laser eye surgery to remove the need for glasses is not covered by provincial health plans, so patients pay thousands of dollars an eye. A few ophthalmologists build entire practices around it. The work is fast and predictable, but you compete with chains on marketing and price, and the reconstruction and disease work is gone.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Surgery days: 8:00 a.m. to mid-afternoon in the operating room (OR), 12 to 20 cataract operations at about 15 minutes each, patients awake with numbing drops. Clinic days: 40 to 60 patients, eye exams, injections for retina disease, laser treatments in the office. Call is a few nights a month, mostly for eye injuries and sudden vision loss that can wait until morning to fix.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The 2026 residency match offered 40 first-year ophthalmology positions across Canada, and all 40 were filled in the first round. That is why it is one of the hardest matches to win.
Job Bank counted about 10,500 surgeons of every specialty working in Canada in 2023, and 38% 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.
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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