Rebuild what injury, cancer and birth defects take away, and reshape what patients pay to change. Far more reconstruction than Hollywood.
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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.
$75,000 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 a plastic surgery figure. Hospital reconstruction is billed to the province. Cosmetic work is paid by the patient.
About $460,000
Median gross clinical payment, plastic surgery doctors, 2024 to 2025
CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) counts 672 doctors in this group. The middle 60% were paid $153,000 to $720,000. 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. Expect 60 to 80 hour weeks and call for hand injuries, burns and facial trauma.
About $509,000
The Job Bank median for surgeons in Alberta, one of the highest in Canada
Ontario's median is about $404,000 and Quebec's about $397,000. Like the national figure, these pool every surgical specialty. Cosmetic fees are set by the surgeon and paid by the patient.
Roughly, all in
$75,000 to $167,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is three years of undergraduate study and a three year medical degree at cheaper Canadian schools, plus the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test), the MCCQE (Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination) and the Royal College certification exam. The high end is four years of each at the most expensive faculties. The five or more years of plastic surgery residency are paid, as are the one or two fellowship years that usually follow, so they add time rather than tuition. Setting up a private cosmetic clinic later runs into the hundreds of thousands, but that is a business investment, 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
Most surgeons are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
Two income streams
Provincial billing for reconstruction, private fees for cosmetic work. Most plastic surgeons do some of each.
On-call stipends
Extra pay for covering hand and facial trauma overnight.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association), partly reimbursed by provinces.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One of the most competitive matches in Canada, for one of the most varied surgical jobs.
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. Plastic surgery electives and research in your final year decide the match.
Plastic surgery residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service). Paid, supervised. Burns, hand, breast reconstruction, facial fractures, cleft lip and palate, skin cancer.
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. Most add a 1 year fellowship.
Biology and chemistry
Required for nearly every pre-med path.
Physics and calculus
Tested on the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Visual art
Plastic surgery is about shape, proportion and symmetry. An eye for form matters.
English
Managing patient expectations is a big part of the job.
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 call yourself a plastic surgeon. Beware the term cosmetic surgeon: in most provinces any doctor can use it, with no surgical residency at all. 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.
Plastic surgery residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service), straight from medical school. 5 years, starting with 2 years of surgical foundations. Offered at McGill, Montréal and Laval.
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.
Only three Quebec faculties train plastic surgeons: McGill in Montreal, Université de Montréal and Université Laval in Quebec City. Montréal residents rotate through hand and microsurgery, trauma and face surgery, children's plastic surgery at CHU Sainte-Justine (the children's hospital) and burns at the CHUM (the Université de Montréal hospital centre). Montréal's program is mostly in French and asks for B2 level French from applicants not schooled in French.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Hand and microsurgery
Reattaching fingers, nerve repair, tendon work. Lots of trauma call.
Breast reconstruction
Rebuilding after cancer surgery, often using the patient's own tissue.
Craniofacial and pediatric
Cleft lip and palate, skull reshaping in babies.
Burns
Skin grafts and years of follow-up at regional burn units.
Aesthetic
A year focused on cosmetic technique before going private.
Plastic surgery electives and research in med school
Reference letters from plastic surgeons decide the match.
Fine motor skills
Sewing, drawing, instrument playing. Microsurgery is done under a microscope with thread thinner than a hair.
Business sense
Useful if you ever open a private clinic.
Thick skin
Cosmetic patients can be unhappy even after a technically perfect result.
Some plastic surgeons leave the hospital entirely for cosmetic practice, where there is no call. But you give up the reconstructive work most people entered the field for, income swings with the economy, and you spend real time on marketing and reviews. Most keep a foot in both worlds.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
7:30 a.m. rounds on burn and reconstruction patients. 8:00 first case in the operating room (OR): a breast reconstruction using tissue from the abdomen, 4 to 6 hours under a microscope joining blood vessels. Other days are a cosmetic list at a private clinic, or hand clinic with 30 patients. On call, a cut tendon or a dog bite to the face can bring you in overnight.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The name comes from the Greek word plastikos, to mould or shape. The specialty existed long before the material, and it grew up rebuilding the faces of soldiers wounded in the First World War.
In Canadian hospitals much of plastic surgery is reconstruction: burns, cancer defects, hand injuries, cleft palates and facial fractures, all covered by provincial health plans. Cosmetic surgery is the smaller, patient-paid slice.
Microsurgeons reattach fingers and move living tissue by joining arteries and veins about 1 millimetre across, using thread finer than a human hair, under a microscope. One stitch off and the tissue dies.
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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