Cancer inquiry free to probe political decisions: minister

Newfoundland and Labrador's health minister has vowed to stay out of a judicial inquiry that is reviewing flawed tests given to hundreds of breast cancer patients.

Ross Wiseman said he is keen to avoid a conflict of interest in the inquiry, which he called Tuesday to address a public outrage over the tests, and the fact that senior administrators were aware the error rate was several times higher than had been publicly disclosed.

The opposition has been raising questions about what Wiseman and preceding ministers of health knew about troubled testing at the lab run by the Eastern Health authority in St. John's.

"Don't you think that is an obvious conflict of interest when you three, who probably and no doubt will be summoned as witnesses in this very inquiry, are playing a role in deciding what the terms of reference will be?" Liberal critic Kelvin Parsons asked in the legislature.

NDP Leader Lorraine Michael was just as pointed.

"Are you asking me to have faith in you when three ministers did not see the need for this information to go public until the information came out in affidavits?" Michael asked, referring to Wiseman and predecessors John Ottenheimer and Tom Osborne.

Wiseman did not answer those questions directly in the legislature, but told reporters later that he wants the inquiry to be free of political interference.

"I think that I can speak on behalf of my two colleagues, and if there's a concern that we'll be in a conflict then we'll remove ourselves from the process and let the remaining colleagues in cabinet define the terms of reference," Wiseman said.

Eastern Health apologized on Friday for confusion caused by a decision to withhold details of hormone receptor tests, which are taken to help determine a breast cancer patient's course of treatment.

Eastern Health disclosed in 2005 that it had had problems over an eight-year period, and that retesting was being done by Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

Last December, Eastern Health said the error rate for those tests— which excluded more than 300 women from consideration for therapies like the drug Tamoxifen— was as low as 10 per cent.

An affidavit signed by an Eastern Health manager, and filed as part of a pending class action lawsuit, shows the error rate among more than 700 samples was actually 42 per cent.

Timeline questioned

Eastern Health disclosed in 2005 that it had problems with hormone receptor tests, and learnedabout the seriousness oferroneous testsin February 2006.

Ottenheimer was the minister of health at the time.

The government maintains that the authority did not brief department of health officials for several months, and the minister— by that time, Osborne had replaced Ottenheimer— was not briefed until Nov. 23.

Wiseman, who became health minister in January during a mini-shuffle, said he was not briefed on the testing problems until last week.

Premier Danny Williams maintains that neither he nor his cabinet played a part in keeping the information quiet.

Parsons wants the inquiry to be unfettered in its investigation.

"Certain ministers knew certain things at certain times," he said. "We need to know the answers to those questions. When did they know? Did they get any directions? Did they have any legal advice, for example?"

Wiseman said the inquiry will be invited to look at how he and any other official— in government or at the arm's-length health authority— made decisions.