Comparing registered veterinary technician wages across Canada

Given the struggles many veterinary hospitals have had with labor shortages, retaining staff has become more important then ever. Offering competitive wages is an important component in staff retention and the Non-DVM Wage Report (1) provides an objective comparison with baseline information on the average wage rate.

The Non-DVM Wage Report contains information on compensation and benefits for all types of hospital staff ranging from reception to management and veterinary technicians and technologists. When the sample size allows, hourly wages are broken down by region and length of employment.

In addition to comparing wages in various regions of the province, comparing wage rates among provinces provides another way of measuring the competitive performance of hourly wages. This article focuses on wages for the most popular clinical staff position, the registered veterinary technician (RVT).

The median hourly wage rate in 2023 for RVTs is listed in Table 1. For the provinces and Canada, the median (midway point in the data) is used because it is not affected by outliers in the data. The wage rate for Canada represents the weighted average of all provinces.

TABLE 1.

Median registered veterinary technician wages.

British Columbia	$29.00
Alberta	$27.50
Canada	$25.62
Manitoba	$25.25
Ontario	$25.00
Quebec	$24.69
Nova Scotia	$24.04
Saskatchewan	$24.00
Newfoundland and Labrador	$23.00
Prince Edward Island	$22.00
New Brunswick	$20.00

The median national wage rate for RVTs was $25.62 per hour. The lowest wages were in the eastern provinces with New Brunswick at $20.00, Prince Edward Island at $22.00 per hour and Newfoundland and Labrador at $23.00. The highest wages were in the west with British Columbia at $29.00 per hour and Alberta at $27.50.

There is an explanation for varying wage rates in various provinces beyond geographic positioning — differences in the cost of living. Provinces with a higher cost of living need to pay more in order to attract labor (including RVTs). The cost of living happens to be higher on the West Coast and lower on the East Coast, but the differences in the cost of living between the provinces is not compatible to the differences in wages from one province to the next. Adjusting the RVT wage by the cost of living in each province indicated which provinces pay relatively more. One province may have a cost of living that is 20% higher than another province but if the first province only pays their RVTs 10% more, their RVTs are 10% worse off, even though their wage is higher.

After adjusting for the most recent information on cost of living in the provinces (2), the province with the highest RVT wages was Quebec at $28.63 (Table 2). In second place and almost $2 less was Nova Scotia at $26.84, and Manitoba was a close third at $26.36. British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island were within 45 cents of the national average. The lowest relative wages were in Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick.

TABLE 2.

Cost of living adjusted registered veterinary technician wages.

Quebec	$28.63
Nova Scotia	$26.84
Manitoba	$26.36
British Columbia	$25.95
Canada	$25.62
Newfoundland and Labrador	$25.61
Prince Edward Island	$25.20
Alberta	$24.61
Ontario	$24.11
Saskatchewan	$23.52
New Brunswick	$23.31

The threat of interprovincial migration is low but access to information is high, so maintaining economically viable wages can be seen as a threat or an opportunity. Some practice owners and managers will look to provinces with higher wages as threats, whereas others will see the higher wage as an opportunity to stay competitive.