Security System Electrician in Québec: wage, competency card and outlook.

With your DEP (program 5296, 1,485 hours) in hand, you can apply for your apprentice competency certificate (CCA) from the CCQ as soon as you land a job guarantee of at least 150 hours over 3 consecutive months from a CCQ-registered employer. That card lets you legally work on job sites governed by the R-20 Act. From there, you log 6,000 apprenticeship hours across 3 periods of 2,000 hours each, then pass the provincial qualification exam (61 questions, 3 hours, 60% pass threshold) to become a journeyperson (CCC). The market is in your favour: in 2024, 345 companies were recruiting this profile against only 76 new apprentices admitted into the trade, and the CCQ rates job prospects as excellent.

You need to log 6,000 apprenticeship hours across 3 periods of 2,000 hours each, then pass the provincial qualification exam. Full-time, that's roughly 3 to 4 years. Your rate climbs with each period — in light residential, for example, you go from $23.11 (period 1) to $32.74 (period 3). Once you're a journeyperson (April 26, 2026), the hourly rate runs from $38.52 in light residential to $41.66 in institutional-commercial — the sector where 94% of the trade's work is concentrated — and up to $41.80 in civil engineering and roads. On the annual income side, the CCQ reports an average salary of $65,156 in 2024 for a journeyperson who worked at least 500 hours that year, versus $32,234 for an apprentice.

Overwhelmingly institutional-commercial: this sector accounted for 94% of hours worked by security system electricians in 2024. Think office buildings, hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and public buildings, where fire alarms, intrusion alarms, access cards, and video surveillance get installed. Industrial and residential each make up 3% of the volume, and civil engineering and roads about 0%. In practice, nearly all positions are in large buildings rather than on houses or road projects. Interregional mobility is also low in this trade (11%), which means most electricians work close to home, especially in the major urban centres where these institutional and commercial buildings are concentrated.