QEII Halifax Infirmary Expansion · Now hiring
Build the hospital. Build your future.
The largest healthcare build in Atlantic Canada’s history is rising in Halifax, and it needs sheet metal workers. Come in new and we’ll get you your ticket. Travel in on yours. Either way, it’s years of work with Local 409.
The build, by the numbers
1.2M
Sq ft of new & renovated space
16
New operating rooms
48
Intensive-care beds
216
Acute-care beds
130+
Sheet metal workers needed
$7.4B
Total investment (30-yr)
14
Storey acute-care tower
2031
Opens to patients
The QEII Halifax Infirmary Expansion is a $4.5 billion build ($7.4 billion over 30 years): a new 14-storey acute-care tower with 16 operating rooms, a 48-bed ICU and a near-doubled emergency department. Main construction is underway. The cranes are up. The crew isn’t full yet.
Why a hospital
A hospital is the
Super Bowl
of sheet metal.
Anyone can hang duct in a warehouse. A hospital is where the trade gets serious. In those 16 operating rooms, your air handling pushes a wall of HEPA-filtered air straight down over the table, air so clean it strips out 99.97% of particles, keeping an open wound sterile. In the ICU and isolation rooms, your pressure-controlled systems decide which way the air moves: negative pressure to lock infection in, positive pressure to keep it out.
That’s miles of ductwork across 1.2 million square feet, fabricated and installed to medical-grade tolerances. There’s no “close enough” in a hospital. Every seam you run is life-safety infrastructure, and a career you can point your kids to for the next fifty years.
Two ways in
New to the trade,
or already ticketed?
New to the trade
Get paid to learn it.
No experience needed and no tuition debt. You’re hired as an employee and earn a real wage from day one, with a raise roughly every 900 hours as your skills grow. About four years of paid, hands-on work beside a certified journeyperson, plus short classroom blocks, and you finish with a Red Seal ticket recognized right across Canada.
How apprenticeship worksAlready ticketed · travel or transfer
Travel in, or transfer for good.
Already hold a SMART sheet metal ticket? Two ways onto the job. Travel in on your card: stay a member of your home local and work the hospital temporarily, with your pension and health contributions reciprocated back home. Or transfer your membershipto Local 409 and make Halifax your home local for good. Either way it’s a multi-year job, not a two-week call.
Contact the hallWhy join Local 409
Skilled trades. No debt.
Real benefits.
Top-scale wages
A journeyperson total package around $56/hour: base, pension, health & welfare, vacation and training combined. Above the provincial high, not the average.
A real pension
A defined-benefit pension funded entirely by your employer on every hour you work. It follows you job to job and waits for you at retirement.
Employer-paid health
Health & welfare coverage funded on top of your wage: drug, dental, vision, life and disability for you and your family. Not carved out of your cheque.
Paid training for life
A dedicated training fund keeps your skills (and your ticket) current at no cost to you.
Steady work, backed by the hall
The union dispatches members to signatory contractors. Between jobs, you’ve got a team finding the next one. You’re not job-hunting alone.
A ticket that travels
Red Seal certification means your qualification is recognized in every province and territory in Canada.
Safety & a voice
Enforceable safety standards, grievance protection and one negotiated scale for everyone. No solo battles with the boss.
The QEII megaproject
Get in on Atlantic Canada’s biggest-ever hospital build: years of steady, high-skill work close to home.
Earn while you learn
You don’t pay to train.
You get paid to train.
Picture two roads. On one, you spend four years paying for a degree, racking up debt, hoping there’s a job at the end. On the other, you spend those same four years getting paid to learn a skilled trade, with health benefits and a pension building from your very first shift.
Sheet metal apprenticeship in Nova Scotia is a paid, four-year program of about 7,200 hours, registered with the Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency. Most of it is hands-on work; short classroom blocks fill in the theory. Finish your hours, pass your exam, and you walk away with a Red Seal ticket and zero student debt, and you could help build the biggest hospital Atlantic Canada has ever seen while you do it.
Start the apprenticeship pathWhy Halifax
A life worth
coming home to.
Your paycheque goes further
A one-bedroom in Halifax runs roughly $1,600–$2,000/month, hundreds less than Toronto or Vancouver, with a cost of living about 10% below Toronto.
Years of work, one site
The QEII expansion is already in main construction. Real sheet-metal scope on a multi-year build. Stop living out of a duffel bag and settle in.
The ocean’s your lunch break
Never more than minutes from the Atlantic. Fishing, hiking the coast, a real city, without the big-city commute eating your weekend.
Easy in, easy home
Halifax Stanfield flies non-stop to ~55 destinations. Work the job and fly home on days off, or road-trip the rig.
Nova Scotia wants trades
As of 2026, the Nova Scotia Nominee Program puts skilled trades and healthcare at its top priority tier. If you’re thinking permanent, the province has written your trade onto its most-wanted list.
Straight talk
We won’t oversell you. The winters are real Maritime winters, and headline wages run a little under Alberta. But cheaper housing, a shorter commute and a lower cost of living close that gap fast. Plenty of members clear more in their pocket here, ten minutes from the ocean. Come for the job; a lot of folks end up calling Halifax home.
Ready to build it?
Union work. Hiring now.
Years of it.
The new hospital is union work. Come in through Local 409. Whether you’re starting fresh or traveling in on your ticket, reach out and we’ll point you at the next step.