Deliver the daily radiation treatments that cure or control cancer. Three to four years of school, weekday hours, and the same patients for weeks at a time.
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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 $83,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $62,000 at the lower end to about $106,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
3 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$18,000 to $45,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Alberta, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
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
$83,000
Lower end
$62,000
Upper end
$106,000
Job Bank's national median is $40 an hour, about $83,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($29.81) and upper end ($51.12) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. Job Bank pools all medical radiation technologists under one code, so this is the group figure.
$46 an hour
The Job Bank median in Alberta, the highest of any province
Ontario is close at $45, and Quebec is lowest at $35. Nearly every radiation therapist works for a cancer agency or hospital, so pay follows a union grid.
Roughly, all in
$18,000 to $45,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The whole route is one accredited three or four year program at $5,000 to $10,000 a year, often run jointly by a college and a university. Add books, uniforms, immunizations and a police check at $1,500 to $3,000, the national certification exam at $980 plus about $89 for remote proctoring or $172 at a test centre, and provincial registration at $400 to $700 a year. That exam is set by CAMRT (Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists) and you cannot work without passing it. Registration is a yearly cost for the rest of your career, not a one time fee.
Roughly $15,000 to $40,000 in tuition. Joint college and university degree programs are the norm in this discipline.
Defined-benefit pension
One that pays a set amount every month for life: HOOPP (the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) in Ontario. Provincial cancer agencies elsewhere have similar plans.
Extended health and dental
Weekday, daytime hours
Treatment machines run roughly 7am to 6pm on weekdays. Rare weekends.
Paid vacation and sick days
Typically 3 to 4 weeks to start.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One discipline of medical radiation technology, with its own program and exam.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Grade 12 physics, biology, math and English. Chemistry helps.
Accredited radiation therapy program
3 to 4 years
Usually a 3-year college program or a 4-year joint college-university degree. Radiation physics, anatomy, cancer biology, treatment planning and patient care, then months of full-time unpaid clinical placement in a cancer centre. Some programs want a year of university science first.
Write the CAMRT (Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists) exam
After graduation
The national certification exam. Radiation therapy is written on the second day of each sitting, in January, May and September.
Register with your provincial regulator
A few weeks
In Ontario that is the CMRITO (College of Medical Radiation and Imaging Technologists of Ontario).
Physics
Required. Radiation dose is physics.
Biology
Required. Cancer biology and anatomy every day.
Math
Dose calculations must be exact.
English
You support the same frightened patients for weeks.
Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI (Prince Edward Island) and Newfoundland and Labrador register medical radiation technologists, including radiation therapists. Ontario's CMRITO (College of Medical Radiation and Imaging Technologists of Ontario) lists radiation therapy as one of its five specialties. Where there is no regulator, employers require CAMRT (Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists) certification. The exam is national, so moving provinces is mostly paperwork.
In Quebec you train in a 3 year college program straight after high school, then pass the Quebec order's own exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math (Technical and Scientific, or Science option) and Secondary IV Science and Technology plus Environmental Science and Technology.
Radiation Oncology Technology DEC (Diploma of College Studies, 142.D0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program. In English at Dawson College, in French at Collège Ahuntsic and Cégep de Sainte-Foy. Dawson interviews applicants. Apply by March 1.
Join the order's student register
First term
Register in your first term with the OTIMROEPMQ (the Quebec order of medical imaging, radiation oncology and electrophysiology technologists). $232.25.
Hospital internships
Final year
Clinical training in cancer centres. At Sainte-Foy it is 960 hours over the last two terms, in Quebec City, Lévis, Saguenay, Sherbrooke and Rimouski.
Pass the order's admission exam
After graduating
Held online twice a year, in June and November. $836 plus tax per sitting for radiation oncology. Register at least 60 days ahead.
Show French, then join the order
A few weeks
A Quebec high school diploma counts as proof of French. Otherwise you pass the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française, the French language office) exam. Then you take the oath and register.
Dawson graduates can also certify with the CAMRT (Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists) to work in other provinces.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Treatment planning (dosimetry)
Designing the beams on a computer instead of delivering them. Quieter and technical.
Advanced practice radiation therapist
A master's-level role that takes on some tasks doctors used to do, like marking targets and reviewing images.
Brachytherapy
Placing radioactive sources inside the body. Procedure-based and specialized.
Quality and safety roles
Every centre needs people who own the checks and audits.
Volunteer at a cancer centre or hospice
Find out now whether you can handle daily contact with very sick people.
Comfort with computers and 3D thinking
Lining up a beam to the millimetre is spatial work.
Teamwork
Two or three therapists run each machine together, all day.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A treatment unit sees one patient after another all day, each for 10 to 20 minutes. You greet the patient, lie them on the table in the exact position from their plan, use tattoos or marks and imaging to line them up to the millimetre, leave the room, deliver the dose from the console, and watch on camera. Then the next patient. Most people come every weekday for 2 to 7 weeks, so you know them, their families and their fears. Some days you work in simulation, scanning new patients and setting up their plans.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In 1951, teams in Saskatoon and London, Ontario built the world's first cobalt-60 units to treat cancer with radiation. Canadian radiation therapists have been delivering treatment ever since.
Job Bank counts about 28,100 medical radiation technologists, radiation therapists included, in Canada in 2023. It sees a strong risk of a shortage over 2024 to 2033.
Modern treatment plans shape the beam to the tumour and spare the organs beside it, so patients are lined up to within a few millimetres every single day. Therapists image the patient before many treatments to check the position.
A radiation treatment is silent and painless while it happens. Side effects like tiredness and skin redness build up over the weeks. Explaining that gap is part of the therapist's job.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Diagnostics and lab 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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