NDP Leader Lorraine Michael wants to know whether Premier Danny Williams played any role in ordering information to be cut from a package prepared under access to information legislation. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador's New Democratic Party leader wants to know how much involvement Premier Danny Williams had in ordering the editing of information released to the media about breast cancer testing mistakes.

Lorraine Michael responded to revelations Friday at the Cameron inquiry, involving orders from Williams's office and from the cabinet secretariat to edit out information to be handed over to the St. John's Telegram.

On Friday, civil servant Reg Coates said he was ordered to remove a series of anticipated questions from briefing notes prepared for former health ministers.

The briefing notes concerned the flawed hormone receptor tests that are at the heart of the Cameron inquiry.

Michael said she wants to know if Williams himself played a role.

"And if he didn't, how much does he allow to go on inside of his office without his knowledge? I mean, that's the question for me," Michael told CBC News.

"If the premier says he didn't know about this, then the question to him has to be, does he think it's acceptable for the top people in his office to be taking actions like this without his knowledge?" Michael said.

Coates did not reveal who in particular had instructed him to delete information from a package of information requested in 2007 under provincial access to information legislation.

Coates, though, also said that the premier's office had shown what he described as exceptional interest in the Telegram's request, and that the office asked that copies of the package be sent to officials including communications director Elizabeth Matthews, chief of staff Brian Crawley and operations director Brian Taylor.

Michael said she hopes some of these points will become more clear when Williams takes the witness stand. A date has not yet been set for Williams to appear before Justice Margaret Cameron, who has been hearing evidence since March.

The provincial cabinet ordered the inquiry a year ago amid a political uproar over revelations that Eastern Health had withheld important information about hormone receptor tests, including the rate of error for the tests.

The inquiry is examining how a St. John's pathology lab produced hundreds of inaccurate results for the tests — used to determine whether a breast cancer patient can benefit from the potentially lifesaving antihormonal drug Tamoxifen — between 1997 and 2005. The inquiry has largely focused to date on how Eastern Health and government officials handled the matter after learning of it in 2005.