Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy says it is 'routine' for the premier's office to be involved with requests filed under access to information legislation. (CBC)

Newfoundland and Labrador's justice minister says the premier's office was within its rights to order a civil servant to delete information from documents on flawed breast cancer testing.

Moreover, Jerome Kennedy said the involvement of political staff in handling access to information requests is part of ordinary business at Confederation Building.

Reg Coates, director of legislative and regulatory affairs in the Department of Health and Community Services, testified Friday at the Cameron inquiry that he had rarely seen "the level of intensity from officials at a higher level" exhibited after a request for ministerial briefing notes on flawed hormone receptor tests.

Coates told Justice Margaret Cameron that aides to Premier Danny Williams asked in 2007 for copies of information that would be turned over to the St. John's Telegram. The office asked for copies to be sent to three senior officials.

Coates also testified that officials in the cabinet secretariat and in the premier's officer asked for some information to be deleted.

The information concerned questions that the media might ask, and what suggested responses could be. The information was deleted from the package turned over to Rob Antle, a political reporter for the St. John's Telegram.

Speaking with reporters on Monday, Kennedy said Coates's testimony contained no shockers.

"Mr. Coates testified that there was some extraordinary involvement from the highest levels, but I would say to you is that this was absolutely ordinary course of business," Kennedy said.

"Because these briefing notes had gone to the premier, it demanded the involvement of both cabinet secretariat and the premier's office," Kennedy said.

Williams is travelling on government business and has been unavailable to comment.

Coates told the inquiry that he felt the information should have been released, but he complied with directions from senior officials.

Kennedy said it was "routine" for the premier's office to deal with Access to Information and Privacy Act requests.

"[Coates's] interpretation did not correspond with cabinet secretariat's, and the premier's office's position was [to] give them whatever information the law requires," said Kennedy, pointing in particular to a July 2005 memo by Elizabeth Matthews, the communications director in the premier's office, which called for an additional briefing note to be included in the Telegram's request.

The Cameron inquiry has been hearing evidence since March about how hundreds of breast cancer patients received inaccurate hormone receptor tests between 1997 and 2005, and about how Eastern Health and government officials responded to the problem.