Mechanical engineers can immigrate to Canada, and the path has two tracks that run side by side. One is permanent residence (PR, the right to live in Canada permanently), decided by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department. The other is a licence from the engineering regulator of your province or territory: Job Bank, the federal jobs site, marks mechanical engineering as regulated in every province and territory. Canada's occupation classification describes the job broadly. Mechanical engineers design machinery and systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning, power generation, transportation, processing and manufacturing, and work for consulting firms, power utilities and a wide range of manufacturing and transportation industries. Industrial and production engineering have their own group, covered on the engineer page.

Getting licensed as a mechanical engineer in Canada

Job Bank lists the regulator for each province and territory. This section follows the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS); other regulators differ in detail.

At APEGS, registering as an engineer-in-training (EIT) is the first step toward a full licence, however much experience you have and wherever you studied. EITs are not licensed to practise on their own: a licensed professional who takes responsibility for the work must supervise it directly.

With an engineering degree from outside Canada, you apply online and ask World Education Services (WES) for a course-by-course assessment sent to APEGS. A degree accredited under the Washington Accord, an agreement between engineering accreditation bodies, can use a document-by-document report instead, but only if you graduated after your country joined, your programme was on the accredited list and accredited when you graduated, and you studied in that signatory's jurisdiction. If APEGS decides you need a full academic assessment, its academic review committee compares your studies with national syllabi and may assign technical exams, approved courses or a review of your work experience. For this field, Engineers Canada's mechanical engineering syllabus sets compulsory papers in thermodynamics and heat transfer, dynamics of machines, system analysis and control, machine element design and manufacture, and electrical and electronics engineering, plus fluid machinery or advanced strength of materials.

To move from EIT to Professional Engineer (P.Eng.), APEGS asks for four years of approved work experience, a passed competency assessment, the professional practice exam on professionalism, law and ethics, references, and an English language competence assessment. Once approved, and with your annual fees paid, you may use the P.Eng. title and seal drawings.

Immigration routes for mechanical engineers

Express Entry is how IRCC manages applications for PR under its skilled worker programs. You build an online profile, IRCC ranks it with points from the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), and the highest-ranked candidates are invited in rounds. Our Express Entry guide explains each stage in order, and the CRS calculator gives an estimate of your ranking points.

Mechanical engineering appears on IRCC's science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) list. Rounds held for that list look back three years: in that time you need at least a year of full-time work, or the part-time equal, in one listed occupation, gained in Canada or abroad. You must also be eligible for an Express Entry program. Our category rounds guide goes further.

Provinces and territories can nominate people for PR, and IRCC says a nominee with an Express Entry profile gets 600 extra points. Our provincial nominee guide explains how nomination works. Provinces also mention mechanical engineers:

• Saskatchewan: its licensing requirements list, which the province says is not a list of eligible occupations, tells mechanical engineers applying to its Occupations in Demand and Express Entry sub-categories to show correspondence from APEGS confirming that their EIT application has been approved, pending fees, or that they have been assigned confirmatory exams.
• Alberta: the Alberta Express Entry Stream may ask candidates to apply under its Accelerated Tech Pathway if they have a tech-occupation job offer from an employer in an eligible tech industry. Mechanical engineers are on its occupation list, and its industry list includes commercial and service industry machinery manufacturing, aerospace product and parts manufacturing, and electric power generation.

Which occupation code fits a mechanical engineer?

Your code in the NOC, Canada's occupation classification, decides which category list you can use, and IRCC says to check that the main duties match what you did, not just the title. The mechanical engineers group includes HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), piping, power generation, robotics, mechatronic and acoustics engineers. It leaves out industrial and manufacturing engineers and metallurgical and materials engineers, who have their own groups, and it leaves out power and stationary engineers. In Canada, power engineers are a separate occupation that operates and maintains reactors, turbines, boilers, generators and stationary engines. If most of your work was running plant equipment, compare your duties with both groups before you choose. Our NOC and TEER guide explains the system.

A common mistake mechanical engineers make

Treating a provincial nomination, or the EIT approval behind it, as permission to practise. Saskatchewan's list states that a nomination does not by itself confirm you are eligible for a licence, and that the professional documents you send for the nominee program do not let you work in a regulated occupation until a Saskatchewan regulator licenses you. Until then, APEGS says an EIT's work must be directly supervised by a licensed engineer who takes responsibility for it, and only licensed professionals may sign and seal it.

First steps

1. Confirm your occupation group by comparing duties on IRCC's NOC page.
2. Use Job Bank to find the regulator for the province you have in mind, and read its steps for engineers educated abroad.
3. If you plan on Saskatchewan, apply to APEGS as an engineer-in-training and order your WES assessment.
4. Compare your studies with the mechanical syllabus.
5. Add up your mechanical engineering work from the last three years and compare it with IRCC's category rule.