One Day Inside Respiratory Therapist Licensing in Ontario: Completing the CRTO Pathway

Thabo’s morning starts the same way it has for weeks: coffee, laptop, and a browser tab open to a portal that isn’t quite finished loading his file. He worked ICU respiratory support in Johannesburg for six years. In Ontario, that experience is real and it counts for something — but it counts for something after a specific sequence, and respiratory therapist licensing in Ontario runs through that sequence whether you’ve been doing the job for six years or sixty.

Morning: the pre-registration form

The first concrete step is a pre-registration form filed with the College of Respiratory Therapists of Ontario — CRTO. It’s not the licence application itself, it’s the thing that opens the file and starts the process moving. Thabo filed his months before he was due to land, because nothing here requires you to already be in Canada to begin.

Midday: waiting on someone else’s paperwork

The bulk of a day like this isn’t dramatic — it’s administrative, and it’s largely out of your hands. CRTO internationally trained respiratory therapist applicants have their academic credentials verified by World Education Services, the same organisation many readers already know from Express Entry credential assessments, but this is a separate check, run for a different purpose. This part of the process — the credential verification delay before the CBRC exam — compares your qualification against Canadian training standards specifically for this profession, not as a general immigration document. Thabo spends this part of the afternoon doing what everyone in this position eventually does: waiting on a university registrar back home to send a transcript, and refreshing an inbox that hasn’t updated.

Afternoon: studying for a test that doesn’t care where you trained

Once the WES verification clears, the next milestone is the CBRC — the national certification exam that every respiratory therapist in Canada sits, regardless of province or where they trained. The CBRC national certification exam canada uses is the same test a Canadian-trained graduate writes, which means the study material isn’t specific to internationally trained applicants — you’re preparing against the same standard as everyone else entering the profession this year.

Evening: the parts nobody puts a number on

What the research doesn’t give us — and what Thabo would tell you himself — is a fixed timeline for any of this. How long WES verification takes, how long CRTO’s own review runs after that, and what the CBRC exam actually costs all vary and change, so treat any figure you see quoted online as someone’s specific experience, not a guarantee of yours. CRTO and CBRC are the only two places to get a real timeline or fee figure from — build a budget or a departure date around their answers, not an online estimate.

What the day actually adds up to

There’s no single dramatic step in respiratory therapist licensing in Ontario — just a pre-registration form, a credential verification you don’t control the pace of, and a national exam that treats you the same as anyone else sitting it. The waiting is the hardest part, not the material.

A wasted week is easy to lose on a process like this one, so our Ontario healthcare resources send you to CRTO’s own current instructions rather than a summary of them.