Williams to answer cancer inquiry questions: minister

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams will reveal how he came to learn in 2005 about botched cancer testing, the province's health minister said.

A judicial inquiry is expected to call Williams as a witness, amid speculation about what the premier knew — and, more precisely, when — about flawed breast cancer testing.

Health Minister Ross Wiseman, at a hastily organized scrum with reporters on Tuesday, said he could not speak for Williams, who is vacationing out of the province, but that the public will eventually hear what the premier has to say.

"I'm assuming they will call the premier, as they will call others, and during that time he'll talk personally about what he knew when, and who shared it with him, and how he came to have the knowledge that he now has," Wiseman told reporters.

An air of intrigue descended over the inquiry on Tuesday, when commission co-counsel Bern Coffey revealed that Robert Thompson, a senior provincial civil servant, had this week discovered e-mails to the premier's office about the tests dating from July 19, 2005.

The date is significant, as that is when former health minister John Ottenheimer — who has been testifying at the inquiry this week — was first informed of problems with hormone receptor tests at the Eastern Health lab in St. John's.

The date, though, was almost three months before the public learned of the issue, and when Williams said he learned about it, too.

Search for more e-mails

Proceedings at the inquiry were suspended Tuesday while officials searched for other e-mails.

Ottenheimer told the inquiry his communications director informed the premier's office soon after he was told. That e-mail, written by Carolyn Chaplin, was one of several e-mails from July 2005 that were located this week, but had somehow been missed in an original search for documentation.

When asked last year in the legislature when he first became aware of the issue, Williams said he received two briefings in October 2005, after the St. John's Independent newspaper reported on redone hormone receptor tests.

The inquiry was called last year, amid revelations that Eastern Health was aware that the error rate of the tests was significantly higher than it had disclosed only months earlier.

Eastern Health did not launch a program to notify patients of its retesting program until October 2005. The inquiry has not been told why three months passed before that happened.

Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Yvonne Jones said Ottenheimer failed in his duties as health minister when he took Eastern Health's advice to not disclose immediately what was wrong at the lab.

Ottenheimer had said he wanted to make the issue public immediately, but deferred to medical advice that early revelation would spark panic among patients.

Ottenheimer also said he did not know if he had the legal right to go public without the health authority's blessing.

"He should have known better than anyone else in the government at that time," Jones said.

"He did not only have the benefit and experience of a senior cabinet minister but he also had a legal background. He was a lawyer."