Run ventilators, manage airways and keep people breathing in intensive care. Three years of college, then shift work.
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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 $85,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $63,000 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.
$14,600 to $31,000 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, Manitoba, 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
$85,000
Lower end
$63,000
Upper end
$106,000
Job Bank's national figures for 2023 to 2024: a median of $41 an hour, about $85,000 a year at 40 hours a week, with a lower end of $30.16 and an upper end of $51 an hour. Almost all hospital jobs are unionized with a pay grid that climbs for about 8 years. Nights, weekends and overtime push real earnings above the grid.
$48 an hour
The Job Bank median in Alberta, the highest of any province
Ontario is $44.66 and Manitoba $44. New Brunswick is lowest at $37.10. New graduates start on the first step of a hospital grid, with shift premiums on top.
Roughly, all in
$14,600 to $31,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
A three year college program is the only route in, so the cost is fixed and fairly low for a hospital career. The low end is a cheaper program with books, uniforms, immunizations and the national exam. The high end is a higher fee program plus the CBRC (Canadian Board for Respiratory Care) exam and a first year of provincial registration. Registration then runs 400 to 700 dollars every year for as long as you practise.
Roughly $12,000 to $27,000 in tuition. One of the cheaper routes into an intensive care career.
Defined-benefit pension
One that pays a set amount every month for life: HOOPP (the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan) in Ontario hospitals. Similar plans in other provinces.
Extended health and dental
Shift premiums
Extra per hour for evenings, nights and weekends.
12-hour shifts
More full days off, which many people like.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Outside Quebec: three focused years, then a national exam. Quebec has its own route: tap Quebec route to add it.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Grade 12 biology, chemistry, physics and math. Most programs want all four.
Respiratory therapy program
3 years
A 3-year college advanced diploma, or a degree at a few universities. Years 1 and 2 are classroom and lab. Year 3 is full-time clinical placement in hospitals, unpaid.
Write the CBRC (Canadian Board for Respiratory Care) exam
After graduation
The national certification exam. The board recently renamed itself Health Professionals Testing Canada, but the exam still goes by CBRC (Canadian Board for Respiratory Care). Passing makes you a registered respiratory therapist. Quebec graduates get their permit from the OPIQ (Ordre professionnel des inhalothérapeutes du Québec) without it.
Register with your provincial regulator
A few weeks
In Ontario that is the CRTO (College of Respiratory Therapists of Ontario). Most provinces have a college.
Biology
Required.
Chemistry
Required. Blood gases are chemistry.
Physics
Gas laws and pressure are the daily science of ventilators.
Math
Drug and ventilator calculations.
English
Charting and handover.
Programs are accredited nationally. Some examples:
Michener Institute (Toronto), Fanshawe, Algonquin, Conestoga
Ontario
SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology), NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology)
Alberta
Thompson Rivers University
British Columbia
Dalhousie
Nova Scotia
Vanier College
Quebec
Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI (Prince Edward Island) and Newfoundland and Labrador each have a college that registers respiratory therapists, for example the CRTO (College of Respiratory Therapists of Ontario). Because the CBRC (Canadian Board for Respiratory Care) exam is national, moving between provinces is straightforward. Where there is no college yet, employers still require the national credential.
In Quebec you train in a 3 year college program that includes anaesthesia, and your permit comes from the OPIQ (Ordre professionnel des inhalothérapeutes du Québec, the Quebec order of respiratory therapists).
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary IV math (Technical and Scientific, or Science option) and Secondary V chemistry. These are the entry courses for the program.
Respiratory and Anaesthesia Technology DEC (Diploma of College Studies, 141.A0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program, called Techniques d'inhalothérapie in French, at many colleges. Vanier is the only one in English and asks for spoken French and an interview.
Work as an extern
From year 2
Once you pass the first two years of program courses, you can join the order's extern register and do some supervised tasks in hospitals. Vanier students start in second year.
Apply for your permit
After graduating
Send the order a transcript showing you met the program's requirements, plus the fees. Its listed steps for Quebec graduates include no separate licensing exam.
Show French
A few weeks
Required under the Charter of the French Language. A Quebec high school diploma counts. Otherwise you pass the OQLF (Office québécois de la langue française, the French language office) exam.
Elsewhere in Canada, anaesthesia assistant is an extra program after respiratory therapy. In Quebec the college program already covers anaesthesia and resuscitation, and graduates work in operating rooms as well as intensive care, emergency and lung testing labs. Vanier graduates can also write the national CBRC (Canadian Board for Respiratory Care) exam that other provinces use. Inforoute FPT (Quebec's vocational and technical training directory) lists an average of $40 an hour, about $80,000 a year.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Anesthesia assistant
A 1 to 2 year post-graduate program. You work in the operating room with anesthesiologists, mostly in daytime hours.
Neonatal and pediatric transport
Riding with sick newborns between hospitals by ambulance or air.
Cardiovascular perfusion
Running the heart-lung machine during surgery. A separate 2-year program.
Sleep lab and pulmonary function testing
Regular hours, no intensive care.
Home and community care
Setting up oxygen and home ventilators. Daytime, lots of driving.
CPR and first aid
Required before placements anyway.
Volunteer in a hospital
Shows you can handle the setting.
Comfort with physics and equipment
You troubleshoot machines under pressure.
Fitness for 12-hour shifts on your feet
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Twelve hours, days or nights. You start with rounds in the ICU (intensive care unit), checking every patient on a ventilator and adjusting settings with the doctors. Then a blood gas, a breathing treatment on the ward, and a call to the emergency department to intubate someone who cannot breathe. Later a delivery in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) where a newborn needs help with its first breaths. You carry a pager all shift and drop everything when a code is called.
The good
The hard parts
Like the field but not this exact job?
Things people don't tell you.
Job Bank counts about 13,400 people in Canada in 2023 in the group that includes respiratory therapists, and sees a strong risk of a shortage over 2024 to 2033.
Respiratory therapy exists as its own profession mainly in Canada and the US. In most other countries, nurses and doctors split the work. A Canadian credential is well respected south of the border.
Neonatal transport teams that move critically ill babies between hospitals usually include a respiratory therapist, sometimes by helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft.
Doctors decide the goals, but respiratory therapists make most of the hour-to-hour ventilator adjustments in intensive care. Nobody else on the unit knows the machines as well.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Therapy and rehab 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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