The Liberal government has passed a controversial bill to impose a two-year fee freeze on doctors in the province.

The legislature passed the bill through third reading on Thursday afternoon, setting it up for royal assent on Friday before the assembly adjourns for the summer.

Health Minister Michael Murphy said the bill doesn't need to take effect immediately if the New Brunswick Medical Society returns to contract negotiations with the provincial government.

The medical society has threatened to take the government to court if it follows through on the fee freeze.

The opposition Progressive Conservatives debated Murphy on the contentious bill for more than an hour on Thursday, homing in on key moments leading up to the dispute with the doctors.

The Tories quizzed Murphy on a March 11 meeting between the medical society and Premier Shawn Graham. The physicians organization apparently thought Graham had given them an option to take the two-year pay freeze after the contract they had negotiated in December and ratified in February expired.

The doctors thought they had approved that deal with the province.

However, Murphy said the doctors were wrong to believe a deal had been reached and several weeks later, one of his officials told them so.

"It would have been conveyed back by [a civil servant] to the medical society that their interpretation of the meeting of March 11 was not as the medical society suggested in their letter of April 6," he said.

The medical society said it continued to believe it could take the freeze later until the province threatened to legislate in mid-May.

Murphy questioned on timeline

Tory MLA Margaret-Ann Blaney, the opposition's healthy critic, asked why anyone should believe the Liberals.

"The word of the premier has been called into question, certainly the word of the minister of health has, by not just the [New Brunswick] Medical Society but by the general population," Blaney said.

The New Brunswick government has imposed a two-year wage freeze on all public servants as a way to battle the projected $740-million deficit.

The proposed legislation would extend the doctors' current contract, which expired in March 2008, until April 2010.

Murphy said if the doctors agree to a two-year pay freeze, the province would save about $36 million, including $25 million from fee-for-service doctors who bill the province by procedure or patient, and $9 million from salaried physicians.

Some of the doctors have argued that the plan will hurt the ability of the province to recruit and retain physicians.