I think that's a good move. We had actually recommended to the minister to move in that direction.
There was some research that the department released—I'm going to say it was in the summer of 2008—that looked at how the surcharge was being implemented. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but basically it is mandatory now unless the defence makes an application and can show the judge why the accused can't pay. What's happening, though, is that judges are routinely waiving the victim fine surcharge without any application from the defence, without any information about whether the offender can pay. So they were just not applying the law correctly, and our proposal was that the minister should consider making that mandatory by just taking away the option.
I'm going to guess that he was getting different opinions from the department, but I was pleased to see in the throne speech that the government accepted our proposal as well.