Yesterday Cypress Hills-Grasslands Member of Parliament David Anderson introduced a private members' bill that would introduce a penalty for forcing a medical professional to participate directly or indirectly in medically-assisted death.

"One of the things that's coming to play is whether medical personnel should have the right to refuse to participate or not," Anderson said. "That was written into the bill that noone should be forced to participate when they don't want to, but there's no penalties around that. So I brought forward a bill that makes it a penalty to intimidate someone into participating into medical assistance dying if they believe it's against their conscience."

Anderson said there doesn't seem to be a shortage of doctors or medical institutions that will participate in medically-assisted death.

He doesn't think a medical professional who doesn't want to participate should have to refer a patient to somebody who will, even to make it easier on a patient who is going to die by euthanasia anyway.

"I guess my point would be if the doctor does not want to participate in this, he should not be forced to do that. This is, unfortunately it's the law in Canada now, so that people can go and they can get medical assistance in dying - if you want to call it assisted suicide - they can get that. We just don't believe that you should be coercing medical personnel into having to participate in it. There are many people who object to this on a whole host of grounds, and I just think it's incumbent on the government to make sure we protect those people and their freedom of conscience as well."

Anderson said first reading of the bill could come in November at some point.