In light of recent cancellations surrounding poor air quality issues, the EMSA Board met to determine a strategy for dealing with this should the circumstance arise again.
EMSA will only cancel games at the direction of the City or at the recommendation of the Health Unit. With this said, we recognize that those entities are not 24/7 and that circumstances that may give rise to a cancellation may fall outside of their operating hours.
Going forward, air quality issues will be dealt with the same as any other “weather event”. Therefore, short of a district-wide directive from EMSA, the final decision regarding a cancellation would lie with the host club or in the event that the host club does not intervene, the match official.
In making these decisions, and given that the EMSA district spans over a wide geographical area, we would suggest that host clubs rely on their local health unit and the published air quality health index (Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) (airqualityontario.com) in their area to make such decision.