Some of the addiction health workers the NDP says it is trying to protect objected Monday, pledging to refuse to implement the “violent expansion of involuntary treatment.”

A coalition organizing a “refusal campaign” seized on a bill introduced late in the legislative sitting under curious circumstances.

After years of consideration and some recent announcements about providing involuntary care for people in the grip of drug addiction, the NDP government waited until the last moment to change the fundamental legal basis for such treatment.

A one-page amendment to the Mental Health Act was added to the legislative package last week to protect health workers from any legal consequences flowing from the state’s power to incarcerate people with mental health issues and subject them to treatment.

The complicated existing provisions are based on “deemed consent,” under which people who are involuntarily committed are presumed to have consented to whatever treatment is administered.

The bill deletes that and recasts the liability protection for health workers to a different part.

It landed just as a long-running lawsuit over the........

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