Yes. Dentists can immigrate to Canada, and the move takes two different kinds of approval. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, decides your immigration, for example whether you become a permanent resident (PR) with the right to settle in Canada. Your licence to practise comes from the dental regulator of the province or territory where you will work. The National Dental Examining Board of Canada (NDEB) says every province asks for the same two things: a dental degree (BDS, DDS or DMD) and an NDEB certificate. Ontario's regulator spells out one more condition before you treat patients there: work authorization issued by IRCC, such as PR or a work permit that allows dental practice. Neither permission replaces the other.

Getting licensed as a dentist in Canada

Job Bank lists dental regulators by province and names NDEB as the first contact for dentists trained abroad. Your next step depends on whether your dental program is accredited, which in Canada the Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada decides. The Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO), Ontario's regulator, treats degrees from Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland as accredited, along with those of one named university each in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and their graduates apply directly for NDEB's certification exam. Outside Canada and the United States, this applies only to graduates from set dates onward.

For graduates of other programs, NDEB's options include its Equivalency Process and an accredited qualifying or degree completion program at a Canadian faculty of dentistry. The Equivalency Process is a set of exams taken in this order:

• the Assessment of Fundamental Knowledge (AFK), 200 multiple-choice questions on biomedical and clinical science, which you must pass before the others;
• the Assessment of Clinical Judgement (ACJ), on diagnosis, clinical decisions and reading radiographs;
• the NDECC, which assesses clinical skills on simulated patients and your judgement in work situations.

You can sit the AFK and the ACJ three times each. Certification comes next through the Virtual OSCE, 200 questions, most of them based on clinical cases, again with a limit of three attempts. The NDEB certificate does not expire, but provincial regulators may still ask for extra documents, a jurisprudence test and proof of language skills.

RCDSO, for example, accepts IELTS, Academic or General Training, with 7 in each skill and 7.5 overall, CELPIP-General with 8 in each skill, and other tests, with results valid for two years. For RCDSO, a letter from your dean confirming that your dental program was taught entirely in English or French can replace the test.

Immigration routes for dentists

Express Entry is how IRCC manages immigration applications from skilled workers online. Each candidate who creates a profile and enters the pool gets a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score, and IRCC chooses whom to invite by those points when it asks people to apply for PR. Our Express Entry guide covers the steps, and our CRS calculator gives an estimate of your score.

Dentistry is one of the jobs IRCC lists for rounds that invite health and social services workers only, so in those rounds you are ranked only against candidates who also fit the list. You count with at least 12 months of full-time work as a dentist, or the same amount part-time, within the last three years; it can be in Canada or abroad, and the months need not be in a row. You must also meet Express Entry's own minimum criteria. Our guide to category rounds explains how IRCC uses them.

Provinces and territories can also nominate, meaning put forward, people who want to become permanent residents, and a nominee who goes through Express Entry gets 600 additional points. Our provincial nominee guide walks through it. Provincial routes that name dentists include:

• British Columbia: dentists appear on the BC Provincial Nominee Program's list of occupations eligible for its Health Authority stream, and that stream requires a full-time job offer with no end date from a B.C. health authority, with the employer's support. The program's own page also includes dentists among the health care workers who may receive targeted invitations.
• Saskatchewan: dentists are among the occupations of the Health Talent Pathway, which needs a permanent, full-time health job offer in Saskatchewan, an approved Employer Position Assessment (the province's check of the job, which your employer requests) and eligibility for a Saskatchewan licence.

Do I have to study dentistry again in Canada?

Not necessarily. NDEB's Equivalency Process tests what you already know instead of making you repeat a degree, and you do not need PR or Canadian citizenship to apply for it or sit its exams. The alternative is to study: qualifying and degree completion programs at Canadian faculties of dentistry are designed to familiarize graduates from abroad with dental practice in Canada, and NDEB lists them in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. RCDSO describes them as two-year programs. NDEB says completing one makes you eligible for its certification exam without the Equivalency Process, and that a degree completion program gives you a degree from an accredited university, so you follow the route for accredited graduates.

A common mistake dentists make

Expecting Australia's dental exams to count in Canada. NDEB says there is no reciprocity between it and the Australian Dental Council: passing Australia's equivalency process does not let you go straight to Canadian certification, and you still complete NDEB's own Equivalency Process first. If Canada is your aim, start with NDEB's exams, and plan your AFK attempts with care, because you get three and a pass is needed before the other Equivalency Process exams.

First steps

1. Check whether your degree counts as accredited on RCDSO's international applicants page or NDEB's pathway guide.
2. If it does not, compare the Equivalency Process with the qualifying programs, and try the self-assessment on NDEB's AFK page.
3. Check your chosen regulator's language rules, such as RCDSO's.
4. Count your dental work in the past three years against IRCC's 12-month rule.
5. Time your application to the regulator: RCDSO advises against applying more than 3 months before you plan to register, because documents such as certificates of standing from your licensing bodies expire after 90 days.