Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I would simply like to remind the House of how important the NDP believes judges’ discretion to be. There is no doubt in our minds that these powers are in fact discretionary and that it is important to ensure that the integrity of the judiciary is recognized and upheld.
On the question of the victim surcharge, obviously, as I explained, this bill unfortunately does not go far enough when it comes to prevention. This does not mean using punishment as a deterrent; we know there is the whole area of prevention and rehabilitation to be considered when it comes to crime.
As a democratic party, we can never stress this enough, and we reiterate our position on this.