Two years of college to a nursing licence and a job in any town in Canada. Hands-on, in demand, cheaper than a degree.
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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 $65,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $52,000 at the lower end to about $79,000 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.
$6,500 to $20,000 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
$65,000
Lower end
$52,000
Upper end
$79,000
Hourly, on a union grid in most hospitals and public long-term care homes. Job Bank's national median is $31.32 an hour, about $65,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($25) and upper end ($38) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group.
$40.13 an hour
About $78,000 a year to start in an Ontario hospital with the Ontario Nurses' Association
The first step of the provincial RPN (registered practical nurse) hospital grid from April 1, 2026, at 37.5 hours a week for full time. Most practical nurses work in long-term care or under other unions, where pay is lower: Job Bank's Ontario median is $31.00.
$44.15 an hour
The median in the Northwest Territories, the highest in Canada
Yukon is close behind at $43.50, and Saskatchewan is the top province at $38.09. Newfoundland and Labrador is the lowest, at $29.58. Nights, weekends and overtime are paid on top.
Roughly, all in
$6,500 to $20,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a two year college diploma at a cheaper provincial rate near $2,000 a year, plus books, uniforms and clinical fees, the registration exam at about $350 and the first year of provincial registration. The high end is a program closer to $8,000 a year, or a 5 term program, with the fuller kit and the one time application fee of roughly $430 on top of the yearly registration. Ontario's Learn and Stay grant covers tuition and books for nursing students who agree to work in Northern, Southwestern or Eastern Ontario afterwards, which can take the low end close to zero. This is one of the cheapest routes into a regulated health job in the country.
Roughly $6,500 to $20,000 total before living costs, one of the cheapest routes to a regulated health job. Ontario's Learn and Stay grant covers tuition for nursing students who commit to work in Northern, Southwestern or Eastern Ontario.
Pension
HOOPP (the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) in Ontario hospitals and many long-term care homes; public plans elsewhere.
Health and dental
Full-time and many part-time union jobs.
Shift premiums
Extra per hour for evenings, nights and weekends.
Union
Most public employers.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A two-year college diploma, one exam, then register.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Grade 12 English, biology and a math. Chemistry helps.
Practical nursing diploma
2 to 2.5 years
Usually 2 years at a public college, with clinical placements in hospitals and long-term care. A few Ontario programs take 5 terms, about 2.5 years.
Registration exam
After graduation
Most provinces use the CPNRE (Canadian Practical Nurse Registration Examination). Ontario and BC (British Columbia) use a newer computer exam called REx-PN (Regulatory Exam, Practical Nurse).
Register with your provincial college
A few weeks
In Ontario that is the College of Nurses of Ontario and the title is RPN (registered practical nurse). Everywhere else the title is LPN (licensed practical nurse).
Biology
Required at most colleges.
English
Required.
Math
Any Grade 12 math. You will calculate drug doses.
Chemistry
Helpful, sometimes required.
Co-op or volunteering in a care home
Some colleges use a pre-admission test or interview; experience helps.
Practical nurse is a regulated title everywhere: RPN (registered practical nurse) in Ontario, LPN (licensed practical nurse) in the other provinces, and infirmière auxiliaire in Quebec. In Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia you register with the same nursing college as registered nurses; most other provinces have a separate college for practical nurses. Registration moves between provinces fairly easily, though Quebec has its own exam and a French requirement. Your scope: patients whose condition is stable and predictable. RNs (registered nurses) take the more complex, unstable ones.
Almost every public college in the country. Some examples:
Humber, Seneca, George Brown, Mohawk, Fanshawe, Algonquin
Ontario
Camosun College, Vancouver Island University, Thompson Rivers University
British Columbia
NorQuest College, Bow Valley College, Red Deer Polytechnic
Alberta
Nova Scotia Community College, New Brunswick Community College
Atlantic Canada
In Quebec practical nurses train in a vocational program at a school board centre, not a college, and are called infirmières auxiliaires.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
A high school diploma is the usual entry. You can also start at 16 with certain secondary credits, or take adult general education courses alongside the program.
DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) in Health, Assistance and Nursing
About 17 months
Code 5825 in English, 5325 in French. 1,800 hours, about 17 months in English. Offered in English by school boards such as Lester B. Pearson, Riverside, Eastern Townships and Western Québec.
Open a file with the OIIAQ (Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers auxiliaires du Québec)
End of the program
The Quebec order of licensed practical nurses. After the program you can work as a candidate for the profession until you pass the exam.
Pass the professional exam
After graduating
A computer exam of multiple-choice questions, up to 4 hours. You get 3 tries in all, within 2 years of your first session.
Show French, then join the roll
A few weeks
The permit needs proof of French. A Quebec high school diploma counts, even from an English school. Then you pay yearly dues and practise.
Fees of the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers auxiliaires du Québec (the Quebec order of licensed practical nurses), before tax.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Bridge to RN (registered nurse)
2 to 3 more years of university, often part time. Many colleges and universities run bridging programs for practical nurses.
Specialty courses
Palliative care, mental health, dialysis, wound care, foot care.
Operating room certificate
A post-grad certificate; hospitals are short of scrub nurses.
Charge nurse in long-term care
Practical nurses often run a floor, especially on nights.
Work as a PSW (personal support worker) first
Real experience with patients, and some colleges give credit for it.
First aid and CPR
Required before placements anyway.
A second language
Long-term care homes serve many languages.
Thick skin and good humour
You will need both.
Some practical nurses take a short foot care course and run their own business visiting seniors at home or in retirement residences, charging per visit. A common side income, and for some a full-time path with no boss.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Usually 12 hours in hospitals, 8 in long-term care. You take report, give medications to your group of patients, do vital signs, wound care and injections, help people wash and move, chart everything, and flag any change to the RN (registered nurse) or doctor. In long-term care you may be the most senior nurse on the floor overnight.
The good
The hard parts
Like the field but not this exact job?
Things people don't tell you.
Ontario set a goal of 4 hours of direct care per long-term care resident a day by March 2025, which meant hiring more than 27,000 nurses and support workers. It reached 95.5% of the goal.
Ontario's provincial hospital grid for RPNs (registered practical nurses) has just 3 steps: $40.13 an hour to start and $41.22 after 2 years. Registered nurses on the same agreement climb for 8 years.
Job Bank counted about 62,600 people working as licensed practical nurses in Canada in 2023, next to about 363,100 RNs (registered nurses).
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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