How to Become an Underground Miner in Canada With No Experience

Nobody's first day underground is on a drill. People get into this trade through support jobs, earn their basic training, and add skills one module at a time. The path is open to people with no mining background, and it's more structured than most outsiders realize. Here's how it works, step by step. For pay and the wider industry picture, see our mining and exploration guide, and for how underground differs from surface work, see underground vs open-pit.

Step 1: Know Which Job You're Actually Applying For

Canada's job classification system splits underground work in two. Production and development miners (NOC 83100) are the people drilling, blasting, and bolting. Underground mine service and support workers (NOC 84100) do everything that keeps them working: moving supplies, running services, building ventilation walls, helping on crews.

With no experience, you're applying for the second group. On job boards the titles look like underground labourer, nipper, service crew, or miner's helper. Searching for "underground miner" will mostly show you jobs that want three to five years of experience. Search for the support titles instead.

Step 2: Get the Basic Tickets

Standard First Aid and WHMIS show up on nearly every mining posting, they're cheap, and you can do both before you apply. A valid driver's licence helps as well.

Step 3: Understand Common Core

In Ontario, where much of Canada's underground hard rock mining happens, entry training is set by law. The province's mining regulation requires new underground workers to complete the Common Core program for underground hard rock miners (Program #770010).

According to Ontario's review of mining health and safety, the program is built from four mandatory core modules plus 75 specialty modules that workers add as their job requires. The four core modules cover:

• Surface and underground induction procedures
• General inspections
• Scaling loose rock
• Lock out and tag

There are two ways to get it:

Get hired first, then trained. Ontario mines and mining contractors run accredited Common Core programs for their own new hires, so many people are trained on the job after they're hired into a support role. This is the cheaper route, because the employer pays.

Pay for it yourself. Training centres such as NORCAT in Sudbury run the program for the public. It takes about a month, most of it hands-on in a working training mine. This costs money and time, but it puts you ahead of applicants with nothing.

Some employers also run longer programs for specific groups. Cementation's New Miner Training Program, for example, trains members of partner Indigenous communities over at least a year, in three phases: theory, practical, and on-the-job.

Outside Ontario, the Common Core name isn't used, and entry training is set by the employer under that province's mine safety rules. The pattern is the same, though. You're hired into a support role and trained on site. Ontario Common Core is widely recognized by employers elsewhere, so it's rarely wasted.

Step 4: Apply to the Right Employers

Three types of employer hire beginners:

• Mining contractors. Companies that mines hire to sink shafts and drive tunnels. They take on new workers regularly and move crews between sites, so you see a lot quickly.
• Mine operators. The companies that own the mines. Their jobs tend to be more stable, and more competitive.
• Exploration and drilling companies. Driller's helper work at a fly-in camp is one of the most common ways into the industry. Browse exploration jobs.

Expect a pre-employment medical and a drug and alcohol test. These are standard for safety-sensitive work. Be honest with yourself as well: the work is physical, the shifts are long, and it's dark, loud, and enclosed. Most people adjust. Some don't, and it's better to know which you are before you spend money on training.

Step 5: Build Your Modules

Once you're in, you move up by adding specialty modules. The usual sequence runs from service work to operating a scoop (mucking with an LHD), then to drilling, rock bolting, and blasting. Each one is a separate module signed off against a provincial standard, and each one raises your pay. This record follows you from employer to employer, which is what makes mining a career and not just a job.

If You're New to Canada

Mining regions are short of workers, and several mining communities are part of a federal immigration pilot. See the Rural Community Immigration Pilot and our work permits and immigration guide.

Getting Started

Browse current mining jobs and search for support titles like labourer, helper, and service crew. If nothing fits yet, a camp services job at a mine site gets you on the property and in front of the people who hire. See all camp jobs.