New faces Tom Rogers and Ben Carter both start the match with Gareth Thomas, Taine Basham and Ben Thomas all among the replacements.
After winning the 2021 Guinness Six Nations and with 12 of his best players either injured or on British & Irish Lions duty in South Africa, Pivac is looking at the next generation.
With the long-term view the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, Scarlets wing Rogers and Dragons lock Carter – 20 and 22 respectively – get the first chance to impress.
“We wanted to name the team early with five debutants involved to give them enough time to settle into things,” said Pivac.
“There were obviously things that we saw in their club game that we liked and they’ve progressed well in this environment. They’ve trained well and learned a lot in a short space of time.
“They’ve taken things on board really well. We think they’re good to go. With a lot of these players, we don’t just want to see them in a training environment, we want to see them in a Test match.
“Five of them will get that opportunity this week.
“Tom is very good in the air. He’s showing good awareness and he’s learning a lot about what he does off the ball. That’s a big area for him to improve in terms of his work-rate and his involvements.
“He’s taken to it like a duck to water. It’s just the enthusiasm these young guys are bringing as you would expect.
“Hopefully we get a good day weather-wise, we get a game that flows and he can get plenty of ball in his hands and show us what he can do.”
Saturday’s game with Canada will see 8,200 fans inside Principality Stadium.
It will be the first time supporters will be back at the home of Welsh rugby since February 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s just nice to have fans back,” said Pivac.
“I was lucky enough to go to Bristol against Gloucester and they had 3,500 at Ashton Gate. It sounded like 35,000 because they were passionate fans who have been starved of rugby.
“They got behind their team and it was great. It was exciting for Stephen Jones and I just sitting in the grandstand. We’re looking forward to it and I know a lot of the families and fans are looking forward to coming along.”
Asked what sort of opposition he expected Canada to be, Pivac concluded: “Tricky because we don’t know a lot about them. They haven’t played any rugby because of Covid and being a tier two nation, they’re not exposed to as much rugby as we are.
“If we look back we only have World Cup footage to analyse and they’ve had a lot of changes in coaching personnel.
“What we do know is they’ll have an experienced coaching group who know a lot about Wales and how we want to play the game.
“We’ve got a lot of changes and a lot of new boys. For that reason, we’re just focusing on what we can bring to the game without worrying too much about the opponents.”
