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John Ruffolo, co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators, is urging Ottawa to change the way it will manage wage subsidies to help business operators with less than 500 employees in Canada.

“I recommend the banks (do it),” Ruffolo said. “They could have done it in 48 hours.”

Canada’s Big Five banks would be the “best distribution channel” for the new program because it could be carried out simply through “know your client” processes already in place for bank customers, said Ruffolo, who is also former chief executive of OMERS Ventures, a unit of one of the country’s largest pension funds.

Since any portion of loans granted to cover wages would be backstopped by the government and forgiven, the banks would not even need to perform credit adjudication, he said.

The scope is so different from 2008 and 2009. This is an elephant — the government — sitting on the economy Mitch Frazer, Torys LLP

In the United States, hundreds of large and community banks have been tapped to deliver similar wage-related aid for small businesses. Although there have been some early backlogs and complaints, payments are already flowing under the eight-week US$349-billion program backed by the U.S. Treasury and approved by Congress last week.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took to Twitter Friday morning to say the system was up and running and that community banks in the U.S. had already processed more than 700 loans for US$2.5 million.

The 12-week Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, unveiled last week, boosted a previously planned 10-per-cent wage subsidy with a promise to cover 75 per cent of a worker’s pay up to $847 a week. It is for firms that have lost 30 per cent of revenue or more and retroactive to March 15, though it could be May before the money is disbursed.