Danny Williams said Friday that he has 'disappointed' with Justice Margaret Cameron's behaviour this week during testimony. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams on Friday openly criticized the judge running the province's breast cancer inquiry.

Williams was critical of how Justice Margaret Cameron behaved this week while hearing testimony from key aides in the premier's office, and said the judge showed "disdain" during testimony.

On Wednesday, Cameron at times appeared to be exasperated as Brian Crawley, the chief of staff in the premier's office, indicated he had trouble remembering many moments of his involvement in dealing with the flawed breast cancer testing.

When Crawley answered one question about what he would have done in a situation, Cameron replied, "Well, I'm getting a lot of that, 'This is what I would've done,' but nobody ever remembers seemingly having done much."

On Friday, Williams fired back.

"I have to say I was disappointed. I was disappointed as I watched Madame Justice Cameron show disdain for a professional witness who was before her, giving testimony, honestly, forthright, under oath, to the best of his or her ability," Williams told reporters.

"The pencil tapping, the shrugging, the rolling of the eyes, the tongue in the cheek — I find that disappointing, that's all I can say."

Crawley testified that he cannot remember receiving an e-mail in July 2005 about what a senior official described as a "major" health issue involving as many as 1,500 breast cancer patients, nor anything about what happened when the first media report appeared in early October 2005.

Crawley could remember vividly, though, a heated cabinet meeting in May 2007, after the public learned that Eastern Health had deliberately withheld important information about flawed cancer tests, including the fact that about 42 per cent of tests were mistaken.

Witnesses doing best to recall what happened: premier

Williams also said the public should accept the limits of human memory.

"People understand that you can't possibly recollect that kind of detail," he said.

"Where the commission and its solicitors are trying to drill down and demand that people have to remember that, well, I think it's a very honest answer for witnesses — any witnesses — but given a certain set of circumstances, here's what likely would have happened."

Williams ignited a political furor in May when he said the Cameron inquiry - which has been hearing evidence since March on flawed hormone receptor tests involving hundreds of breast cancer patients - was using "inquisitorial methods" in examining witnesses.

Williams also likened the inquiry to a "witch hunt," and later explained that a physician sitting next to him at a meeting with medical specialists had used the phrase "Spanish inquisition" to describe the inquiry.

Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy also spoke about the cost, speed and style of the inquiry, and went so far as to claim that if the inquiry continued at the same pace, the entire health-care system could collapse.

Kennedy and Williams, though, also focused their criticism on inquiry co-counsel Bern Coffey, who has had several pointed exchanges with some witnesses.

Until now, Williams has not publicly criticized Cameron herself.

Williams appointed Cameron, who sits on the Newfoundland Supreme Court's appeals division, last summer to head the judicial inquiry on what went wrong at a St. John's pathology lab that produced hundreds of inaccurate results with estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor tests.

The complicated ER/PR tests are conducted to determine if a breast cancer patient can benefit from Tamoxifen, the potent antihormonal therapy.

Asks for extension to complete report

Last month, the Newfoundland and Labrador government applied to Cameron, with an unusual request that she review her own terms of reference and determine whether Coffey and fellow co-counsel Sandra Chaytor had the right to cross-examine witnesses.

In a written decision, Cameron determined that they did.

Williams's remarks about the inquiry last month generated considerable heat, particularly from breast cancer patients who did not agree with Williams that the inquiry should be expedited to its conclusion.

Cameron has asked for an extension of her original deadline of this July, informing government she will need until next February to complete her report.

The commission did not begin hearing evidence until March, in part because of a two-month delay caused by Eastern Health's unsuccessful bid in Newfoundland Supreme Court to block the public release of external reviews of the pathology lab.

Williams has said government will extend Cameron's mandate, but the government has not yet announced by how much.