Would never mislead public on cancer tests, PR exec tells inquiry

The woman who ran Eastern Health's communications department during much of the breast cancer testing crisis has testified she never did anything to misrepresent the flawed tests.

Susan Bonnell, who had been Eastern Health's director of strategic communications, told the Cameron inquiry the authority did not downplay mistakes with hormone receptor testing, even though she had urged executives not to take the issue public when they first learned of it.

Inquiry co-counsel Bern Coffey asked Bonnell, who has been reassigned to an internal communications position since February, why notes taken by a government communications official during a July 2005 briefing with John Ottenheimer, the minister of health at the time, include the words "messaging" and "positioning."

Bonnell appeared offended by Coffey's line of questioning.

"If what you're asking me is did we ever consider trying to make this look as if it were something that we knew it was not, then I would say to you that that is not ethical and that I would never agree to do that," Bonnell said.

"That concept was never, ever floated at Eastern Health as an idea."

Even though a draft news release — which was never issued — highlighted new testing equipment rather than the discovery of testing problems, Bonnell said the authority did not want to "market" the issue as anything it was not.

'Wishful thinking'

She said she did not know why Carolyn Chaplin, the health department's communications director at the time, would have written such words as "positioning" and "individual message" into a notebook during that July 2005 meeting.

"I certainly would never look at an opportunity to market something like this," Bonnell told Justice Margaret Cameron.

"I don't even remember her saying it there in the meeting. It may have just been wishful thinking on her part."

Bonnell wrote a memo in July 2005 urging George Tilley, then Eastern Health's chief executive officer, and others to not go public while retesting had started.

Bonnell told the inquiry Thursday that this was "a consensus-built decision" made by "all the individuals who were involved in the decision-making process to that point."

Meanwhile, Bonnell also said Eastern Health erred by holding back information — including the true error rate of hormone receptor testing — during December 2006 technical briefings with journalists.

That information did not emerge until a May 2007 CBC News report.

Deliberately withheld data

Bonnell admitted that Eastern Health deliberately withheld that data because of a class action lawsuit that would subsequently be certified in Newfoundland Supreme Court.

"We should've just given them all the numbers," she said.

"The issue of error and causative factors were things we just didn't want to get into .… That's just the reality of it. Whether it's right or wrong, it's the reality of it."

The inquiry has been told by numerous witnesses that information about the testing results, at different stages of the crisis, was withheld because of fear of litigation.

Bonnell described the hormone receptor testing issue as one that was "a roller-coaster" and "exhausting" to deal with.

"You know, it's like a smouldering ember that takes something to ignite before it bursts into flame," she said.

"And in many, many ways, ER/PR was a smouldering crisis," said Bonnell, referring to the hundreds of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor test results that were flawed between 1997 and 2005.