How electrical licensing works in New Brunswick

New Brunswick regulates electrical work in a way that surprises candidates who have read about Ontario or Alberta. There is no master electrician exam and no separate written exam for the electrical contractor licence. Instead, the province links three things together: a certificate of qualification that proves a person is a construction electrician, a provincial electrician's licence that lets that person do electrical work, and an electrical contractor licence that lets a business take out wiring permits. Each step builds on the one before it. This course explains each step, the rules that come with it and the knowledge an electrical contractor in New Brunswick is expected to have, so that you can apply with confidence and run the business legally once you are licensed.

The course follows Émilie Cormier, a construction electrician in Moncton who earned her New Brunswick certificate of qualification with the Red Seal endorsement in 2021 and has held a Class 3 electrician's licence ever since. She works for Tantramar Electric Ltd., a company of eleven people run by Gilles LeBlanc, who has held the company's contractor licence for more than twenty years and is the electrician the licence relies on. Gilles plans to retire within eighteen months. He has asked Émilie to become the licensed electrician named on the company's contractor licence, and she is also weighing whether to start her own company instead. Nicole Gauvin runs the office and keeps the licence, permit and insurance records. Owen MacDonald is a journeyperson who recently moved from Nova Scotia, and Logan Arsenault is a second-year apprentice. This season the company is wiring a duplex in Dieppe, fitting out a medical clinic on Mountain Road, upgrading a grain storage building on a farm near Sussex and installing electric vehicle chargers at a condominium in Riverview.

Everything in this course comes from public sources: the Electrical Installation and Inspection Act, its General Regulation, the electrical pages of the Government of New Brunswick, NB Power's wiring permit pages, the Construction Remedies Act and WorkSafeNB's guidance. No text from the Canadian Electrical Code is reproduced. Fees, rules and forms change, so treat every detail here as a starting point and confirm it with Technical Inspection Services, NB Power or WorkSafeNB before you rely on it.

The statute and the regulation

The governing statute is the Electrical Installation and Inspection Act, chapter 144 of the Revised Statutes of New Brunswick, 2011. It is a short Act. Section 3 requires electrical installations to meet the standards set by regulation and forbids anyone to do electrical work except as the Act and the regulations allow. Section 4 provides for a Chief Electrical Inspector and inspectors, section 5 gives inspectors the power to inspect and make orders, section 6 requires accidents and fires involving electrical installations to be reported, section 7 creates the offences, and section 9 sets out appeals. Most of the detail lives in the General Regulation, New Brunswick Regulation 84-165, which deals with licences, permits, inspections, fees and the adoption of the electrical code.

Read together, the Act and the regulation answer four questions that come up again and again. Who may do electrical work? Who may take out a wiring permit? What standard must the installation meet? And who checks it? The answers are, in order: holders of the right electrician's licence and the people the regulation exempts; licensed electrical contractors; the Canadian Electrical Code as adopted and modified by the regulation; and the inspectors of Technical Inspection Services.

Technical Inspection Services

The provincial body that runs the system is Technical Inspection Services, a branch of the Department of Public Safety. People often shorten the name to TIS. It is the office of the Chief Electrical Inspector. TIS issues and renews electrician and contractor licences, inspects electrical installations, approves electrical plans for larger installations, receives construction point call-ins from contractors and publishes bulletins that explain how it interprets the regulation. Applications for new electrician and contractor licences are made through an online portal called TIS Connect, and renewals can be done online through Service New Brunswick.

Two other organizations play supporting roles. Skilled Trades NB, the provincial apprenticeship and occupational certification office, registers apprentices and issues certificates of qualification in the designated trades, including construction electrician. NB Power processes applications for electrical wiring permits from licensed contractors, under an agreement that the Act allows, but it does not inspect installations; inspections are done by TIS. Keeping these roles straight saves confusion. If a question is about a trade certificate, think Skilled Trades NB; about a permit application, think NB Power's online form; about a licence, an inspection or the meaning of a rule, think TIS.

The licences at a glance

The province describes eight types of licence connected to electrical work. For a construction electrician and a contractor, three matter most. The electrician's licence, issued in Class 3 today, is for a person who holds a New Brunswick certificate of qualification as a construction electrician; it lets that person do electrical work on any type of installation and act as the electrician in charge of a job. The industrial electrician's licence is for holders of a certificate in the industrial electrician trade who work in establishments that employ electricians permanently. The electrical contractor licence, issued in Group 3 today, lets a business take out wiring permits and carry on the business of electrical contracting.

The other licences cover narrower fields: a sign installer contractor licence and a sign installer licence, an identification card for sign installer helpers, and two licences for lightning protection systems, one for agents and one for suppliers. Older Class 2 electrician licences and Group 2 contractor licences, issued before 1968, can still be renewed but are no longer issued. Holders of a construction electrician certificate from another province can receive a construction electrician identification card, which lets them work for a limited time while they sort out their New Brunswick status. Lesson 2 looks at eligibility for each licence in detail.

Three separate permissions

It helps to keep three permissions apart. The first is the right to do electrical work with your own hands, which comes from a valid electrician's licence, an identification card or, for an apprentice, registration and supervision. The second is the right to take out wiring permits, which comes only from holding an electrical contractor licence. The third is the right to run a business, which depends on business registration, tax accounts, WorkSafeNB coverage and insurance rather than on any electrical licence. A person can have the first without the second: Owen, for example, can work on Tantramar's jobs once his status is in order, but he cannot take out a permit in his own name. A company can have the second only if it relies on someone who has the first.

The regulation adds a fourth idea that ties the first two together: the electrician in charge. Every electrical construction job must be directed by a licensed electrician who is on site or readily available. The contractor licence and the permit say who is responsible to the province for the job; the electrician in charge is the qualified person who directs the work on the ground. On a small job these may be the same person. On a larger one, a company with one contractor licence may have several electricians in charge, one for each job.

Where the code comes from

The technical rules for installations come from the Canadian Electrical Code, Part I, published by CSA Group. New Brunswick gives the code legal force through the definition of Code in Regulation 84-165, which names a specific edition and lists a small number of New Brunswick modifications. An amending regulation filed in March 2026 moved the definition to the 2024 edition, the 26th, with effect from March 15, 2026, and replaced the New Brunswick rule on receptacles in dwelling units. The regulation also says that where it conflicts with the code, the regulation prevails. Lesson 5 covers the adoption and the modifications in detail.

What a contractor is expected to know

Because there is no separate contractor exam, nobody sits you down and tests your knowledge of the regulation before the licence is issued. That does not make the knowledge optional. A contractor who takes out permits without understanding the rules soon meets an inspector's order, a failed inspection, a stop on supply, an unpaid account or a suspended licence. The regulation lets the Chief Electrical Inspector suspend or revoke a licence for repeated infractions, negligence, misrepresentation, employing unauthorized people and other grounds. The knowledge in this course is what keeps a licence in good standing.

The core courses in this program cover the code skills: navigating the code, calculations, wiring methods, grounding and bonding, and special installations. This course covers the New Brunswick layer: who may do what, how licences and permits work, the provincial modifications, the contractor's duties, contracts and liens, workplace safety, renewal and keeping up to date. Gilles suggests that Émilie start by drawing a one-page map of the system, with the Act and regulation at the top and the organizations and documents below, so that every rule she learns has a place to go.

# Emilie's question sorter: which body answers which kind of question?
sources = {
    "Can an unlicensed carpenter move a receptacle?": "Regulation 84-165 (licensing rules)",
    "Where do I apply for a contractor licence?": "Technical Inspection Services (TIS Connect)",
    "How do I apply for a wiring permit?": "NB Power online form (licensed contractors only)",
    "Who inspects the Dieppe duplex?": "Technical Inspection Services",
    "Who issues a certificate of qualification?": "Skilled Trades NB",
    "Which code edition applies to a new job?": "Regulation 84-165, definition of Code",
}
for question, source in sources.items():
    print(f"{question:<50} -> {source}")
print(len(sources), "questions sorted")

Can an unlicensed carpenter move a receptacle?     -> Regulation 84-165 (licensing rules)
Where do I apply for a contractor licence?         -> Technical Inspection Services (TIS Connect)
How do I apply for a wiring permit?                -> NB Power online form (licensed contractors only)
Who inspects the Dieppe duplex?                    -> Technical Inspection Services
Who issues a certificate of qualification?         -> Skilled Trades NB
Which code edition applies to a new job?           -> Regulation 84-165, definition of Code
6 questions sorted

Some questions draw on more than one source. A question about a failed inspection on a job with an unpaid invoice may involve the regulation, the code, the contract and the Construction Remedies Act at once. Starting in the right place still saves time.