How to become a fire safety technician in Quebec?
There is no “fire safety technician” qualification certificate in Quebec: that title does not appear among the compulsory qualification certificates published by Québec.ca (list consulted on October 18, 2026). “Fire safety technician” is therefore not a regulated trade, and the routes into fire alarm and fire suppression systems do not belong to the same authority: vocational training, industry certification, or contractor licence.
1. Training — DVS 5296. The vocational training program for this field is Installation et entretien de systèmes de sécurité (code 5296): 1,485 hours, electrotechnology sector, approximately 14 months (Inforoute FPT, consulted October 18, 2026). Its competencies explicitly cover installing a fire alarm system (“installer un système d'alarme incendie”) and commissioning, maintaining and inspecting one (“mettre en marche, entretenir et inspecter un système d'alarme incendie”), along with anti-theft, access control, video surveillance and sprinkler supervision systems.
2. Industry certification — CFAA. The Canadian Fire Alarm Association awards registration as a Registered Fire Alarm Technician; this is not a government qualification certificate. The path published by the CFAA: five theory courses, trainee registration, then a registration theory exam and a practical exam (CFAA, consulted October 18, 2026); the CFAA recommends about 1,500 hours of work experience before sitting the registration exams (CFAA program description, consulted October 18, 2026).
3. Contractor licence — RBQ 13.2 / 13.3. To carry out fire alarm or fire suppression work for clients, what is required is not a worker certificate but an RBQ contractor licence with the relevant sub-category, plus a respondent (répondant) who passes that sub-category's exam: 13.2 – Fire alarm systems contractor, or 13.3 – Fire suppression systems contractor. Both exam information sheets (updated December 10, 2012; consulted October 18, 2026) publish a multiple-choice exam of 3 hours, a 60% passing grade and no number of questions. Sub-categories 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 1.2, sometimes cited for fire work, are general contractor sub-categories covering buildings (new residential buildings covered by a guarantee plan; small buildings): the RBQ states itself that a general contractor “ne pourra pas exécuter de travaux qui concernent les systèmes d'alarme incendie sans détenir la sous-catégorie 13.2” — cannot carry out fire alarm system work without holding sub-category 13.2 (general contractor sub-categories list, consulted October 18, 2026).
Salary. Job Bank publishes no salary for “fire safety technician”; fire alarm technician postings there are mapped to NOC 22311 (electronic service technicians), whose median hourly wage in Quebec is $27.00, with a range of $18.00 to $36.00 (Job Bank, wages updated November 19, 2025; consulted October 18, 2026).