Newfoundland and Labrador's governing Tories were focused on public relations, not just health, while approving a new cancer drug, the New Democratic Party says.

NDP Leader Lorraine Michael asked Premier Danny Williams if he was 'disturbed' about public relations advice on drug approval.
(CBC)

In October 2005, then Health Minister John Ottenheimer solicited cabinet support for subsidizing Herceptin, an expensive but effective drug offered to breast cancer patients in the early stages of the disease.

The briefing document, which has been tabled as an exhibit at the judicial inquiry now examining how a St. John's pathology lab produced hundreds of inaccurate hormone receptor test results, included arguments in favour of approving the drug.

The briefing, prepared about three weeks after the first news reports about problems with hormone receptor testing, said "significant media attention" to the errors was eroding public confidence in the health-care system, and that approving Herceptin could help restore it.

NDP Leader Lorraine Michael quizzed Premier Danny Williams in the legislature on Wednesday about the government's concern about optics.

"Doesn't it disturb the premier that a decision around this drug would strategically be good, because the public will feel better, and, No. 2, it will help us with negotiations with physicians who have been lobbying for these drugs?" Michael asked.

The cabinet memo also said that if government did not approve Herceptin, it might have been criticized because it was available in other provinces.

Williams not bothered

Williams, though, was unapologetic that government would consider such factors while deciding whether or not to approve funding for such a drug.

Danny Williams says his government has made 'several hundred or thousands' of improvements to the health care system in the last five years.
(CBC)

"It doesn't disturb me, Mr. Speaker, that there are another 50-odd, I am guessing, items of things that have been done as well to improve the health-care system," Williams said.

"I would suggest, if you go back over the last five years, there are probably several hundred or thousands of things that have been done by our government to improve the health-care system, and we will do it again."

Government announced approval for Herceptin funding on Nov. 9, 2005, two weeks after the cabinet briefing.

Ottenheimer, who concluded his testimony at the inquiry this week, said government was under pressure to approve a therapy that was already widely available in Canada.

"Really, we were falling in line with the vast majority of other Canadian provinces," Ottenheimer told the inquiry Tuesday.

Ottenheimer said it was not unusual for a communications analysis to be attached to the Herceptin briefing, which also included separate financial and legislative analyses.

"The whole concept of messaging, I suppose, in some sense is part and parcel of a communications regime," he said.