The surgeon for kidneys, bladder, prostate and the male reproductive system. Five years of residency, a mix of clinic and operating room, and a lot of prostate cancer.
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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.
11 to 15 years after high school, on the usual route.
$74,000 to $165,000 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 urology figure. Most urologists bill the provincial health plan per operation and visit, and clinic rent, staff and malpractice fees come out of that.
About $582,000
Median gross clinical payment, urology doctors, 2024 to 2025
CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information) counts 825 doctors in this group. The middle 60% were paid $303,000 to $848,000. 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 on the scale 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, which ran to June 30, 2026. These are its latest published rates. Other provinces have their own agreements. In Ontario you can be on call in the hospital up to 7 nights in every 28.
About $509,000
The median for all surgeons in Alberta, the highest of any province with consistent figures
Manitoba is next at about $458,000. Quebec's median is the lowest published, at about $397,000. Urology has more clinic time than many surgical fields, so office costs take a bigger share.
Roughly, all in
$74,000 to $165,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a three year undergraduate degree at a cheaper university, a three year medical school at the lowest domestic tuition, and the exam fees: the MCAT (medical school admission test), the MCCQE (the national medical exam), and the Royal College urology exam. The high end is a four year degree, a four year medical school at 28,000 a year, and the same exams at their upper fees. Residency is paid, so those five years add no tuition, but many graduates also borrow for living costs, and that debt is not counted here. Malpractice coverage costs about 14,600 a year in Ontario once you practise and is partly reimbursed, so it is a cost of working rather than of qualifying.
Roughly $74,000 to $165,000 before living costs. Many people also finish medical school with large student debt, and residency pay rarely pays it off.
No employer pension
Most urologists are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
On-call stipends
Hospitals pay extra for covering nights and weekends.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association). Provinces reimburse part of the fee.
Office procedures
Vasectomies, scopes and biopsies in your own clinic add steady income without an operating room booking.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Every doctor's road, then a direct-entry surgical residency.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top marks in biology, chemistry, math and English. You need a very high average for a science undergrad.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any major works. Keep a GPA (grade point average) above 3.8, volunteer, do research. Write the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Medical school, the MD (doctor of medicine)
3 to 4 years
Very competitive: most applicants are turned down. Classes, then clinical rotations. Urology electives and reference letters decide the match.
Urology residency
5 years
Direct entry from medical school through CaRMS (the residency matching service). Surgical foundations first, then kidney stones, prostate and bladder cancer, kidney cancer, incontinence, transplant and children's urology.
Royal College exam, licence, often a fellowship
End of residency, plus 0 to 2 years
Pass the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada exam to become FRCSC (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada). 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.
Calculus and functions
Physics
Tested on the MCAT (medical school admission test). Lasers for kidney stones are physics.
English
Half the job is talking about things people find embarrassing. Plain, calm language matters.
You need a licence from your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons to practise, and Royal College certification in urology to work as a urologist. Hospitals will not grant operating privileges without both. The credential is national, so moving provinces is 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.
Urology residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service), straight from medical school. 5 years at McGill and Montréal, starting with surgical foundations. Montréal takes 2 to 3 residents a year and trains in French.
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.
McGill's program trains at several sites, among them the Royal Victoria, the Cedars Cancer Centre, the Montreal Children's and the Jewish General, and includes 3 months of research in the third year. Montréal trains at several hospitals, including the CHUM (its university hospital), Sainte-Justine and Maisonneuve-Rosemont, with optional rotations in Trois-Rivières and Chicoutimi. It says good spoken and written French is essential.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Optional 1 to 2 year add-ons after residency.
Urologic oncology
Prostate, bladder and kidney cancer surgery, often with a robot.
Endourology and stones
Scopes and lasers through natural openings. No cuts.
Pediatric urology
Birth defects of the urinary tract in babies and children.
Female pelvic medicine
Incontinence and pelvic floor surgery.
Transplant
Kidney transplants, alongside transplant surgeons.
Surgery electives and research in med school
The match is decided by letters from urologists who watched you work.
Fine hand skills
Instruments, sewing, video games. Scope and robot work is hand-eye coordination.
Stamina
Sports, shift work, anything that proves you can function tired.
French
Opens Quebec, Ottawa and New Brunswick programs and jobs.
Many prostate removals in large Canadian centres are done with a surgical robot. You sit at a console a few metres from the patient and steer instruments through small ports while watching a magnified 3D view. It is still surgery, still your hands, just through a machine. Smaller hospitals do the same operations the older way.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
7 a.m. rounds on your inpatients. Operating day: a kidney stone blasted with a laser through a scope, a bladder tumour scraped out, then a prostate removal that runs into the afternoon. Clinic day: 25 to 35 patients with blood in the urine, prostate results, incontinence, a vasectomy or two in the procedure room. On call about one night in four or five, which can mean a blocked, infected kidney at 2 a.m. or a testicular torsion that cannot wait an hour.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Canadian Cancer Society expects about 29,300 men in Canada to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2026, about 1 in 9 men over a lifetime. It is the most common cancer in men apart from non-melanoma skin cancer, and urologists diagnose and treat much of it.
About 10% of Canadians have a kidney stone at some point, men more often than women. Half of people who form one get another within 10 years, and 75% within 20 years.
In a cystoscopy, a thin tube with a camera goes into the bladder through the urethra, with no cut at all. It usually takes only a few minutes, often in the urologist's office with numbing jelly, and most people go straight back to their day.
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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