After a delayed start due to a wet outfield at Myreside caused by overnight and early morning drizzle, play eventually started at 10:45 with no reduction in overs.
Kenya won the toss and chose to bowl and kept the big hitting Canadian openers quiet for a short time keeping the score down to 15/0 after 4 overs.
From there on in Cheema and Gunasekara came to terms with the pace of the wicket and pushed the score along to end the power-play at 50/0.
Their partnership of 83 came to an end when the big hitting Cheema was caught at long off going for another 6 but not quite getting enough on it to be easily caught by Patel for 35 off 25 balls and was clearly looking to push on for a big score.
Soon after Cheema's dismissal Gunasekera brought up his 50 off 35 balls but was out soon after going for an attempted sweep shot that ricocheted off his body and rolled onto the stumps to be bowled by James Ngoche.
The Canadian 100 came up in the 15th over but the loss of both of Canada's openers and Kenya's spinners drying up the runs saw the run rate slump.
Canada ran hard for everything but couldn't find the boundary often enough in the last few overs to post the sort of total they looked like making earlier in the innings.
Two wickets in the 19th over as both Dhaliwal and Patel were caught in consecutive balls in the outfield saw then stumble when they should have been flying. Both out going for the big hits that the team required to put this chase out of reach for the Kenyan batsmen and Canada end with 143/5 off 20 overs.
Kenya started their chase with a 6 off the first ball of the match to show their intent and both Kenyan openers, Patel and Karim set off going at better than a run a ball.
After four overs Kenya were 34/0. Twice as much as Canada were at the same stage.
A few wickets saw Karim and Ouma come together at 3/52 in the 8th over and they set about rebuilding the inning. Some tight bowling from the Canadian spinners forced the run rate up to over 9 per over but Karim and Ouma plundered 17 runs of a single Patel over which brought the run rate level and achievable for the rest of the innings.
The partnership between Karim and Ouma was worth 94 runs and took the game away from Canada as none of their bowlers could break through it and Kenya cruised to victory with 9 balls to spare and 7 wickets in hand on the back of it.
Karim was named man of the match for his game changing innings of 74 not out off 54 balls for Kenya.
Kenya's next game is against Oman tomorrow while Canada's next game is also against Oman on Sunday.