Mr. Speaker, it certainly is important to provide support for victims. There are many programs that I have advocated for in the past.
A victim surcharge makes sense, but I worry about the removal of judges' discretion to waive this surcharge when they can see that the person before them would suffer undue harm. The current legislation which is being changed says that where there is undue hardship on the person being convicted or on their dependents or family, for which I think there will be more sympathy, in that case the judge would have the discretion to say that he or she would not apply the surcharge.
That is the question I would ask my friend. Even if there is community service made available, what happens to dependents of that convicted criminal in cases where the payments to the victims would mean that the family would face undue hardship?