I'm not at all confident that they will be able to meet that obligation. The fact of the matter is that a lot of people who are marginalized and impoverished are charged with offences, and they may have committed those offences—I'm not denying that. But to scrape together the additional resources to be able to pay the surcharge, on top of whatever other penalty is appropriately imposed, is going to create a significant hardship for some of those who don't have enough money from their disability benefits to last them the entire month. They don't have enough groceries; they're going to the food banks. They can't make it without help. It will create some real problems.
On October 30th, 2012. See this statement in context.