It earned them a quarter-final place at the tournament in West Vancouver which will see the top two teams progress to the HWL semi-finals, a qualification competition for next year's World Cup.

Rachel Donohoe opened the scoring for Canada before Alison Lee's deflected effort and Alex Thicke’s shot made it 3-0 inside the first six minutes.

Stephanie Norlander added a fourth for the home side before another strike from Donohoe and a brace bagged by Jordyn Faiczak made the score 7-0 at half time.

Donohoe completed her hat-trick shortly after the restart and the scoring was rounded off with two from Brienne Stairs along with strikes from Nikki Woodcroft and Dani Hennig.

They will meet Belarus in the next round on Thursday (April 6) after the Europeans finished the pool stage off with a 3-2 loss to Uruguay.

The match was only decided in the last minute when Uruguay's Maria Theresa Viana Ache scored the winner.

Earlier in the tie, Carolina Mutilva had put the South Americans ahead before Sviatlana Bahushevich equalised for Belarus.

Matilde Kliche made it 2-1 to the Uruguayans, but Nastassia Syrayezhka levelled proceedings again before Viana Ache's last minute goal.

Chile secured their bye to the semi-finals in West Vancouver with a 2-0 win over Mexico with first half strikes from Sofia Walbaum and Manuela Urroz proving to be enough for the South Americans.

Mexico will face Uruguay in Thursday's other quarter-final match.

The semi-finals, which will also feature India, are due to take place on Saturday (April 8) before the final a day later.

Trinidad and Tobago will also be in action on Saturday as they take on the fifth place team to decide who finishes seventh overall.

The winner of this clash will go on to take on the sixth ranked team in a classification match on Sunday (April 9), with a third-place play-off also on the schedule.