Nothing unusual about document edits: Kennedy

ST. JOHN'S - Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy said it was "an absolute routine matter" for the Premiers Office and the cabinet secretariat to edit documents asked for in a Access to Information request.

Kennedy spoke at a hastily-called news conference late Monday afternoon about comments made by a senior civil servant at the Cameron Inquiry on Friday.

Reg Coates - who is in charge of Access to Information for the Department of Health - said he was against deleting questions from briefing notes and various names from other documents before a requested package of documents was sent to Transcontinental Media in June 2007.

Coates also called the high-level involvement in the editing "extraordinary."

But not so said Kennedy.

"Mr. Coates testified that this was a, there was some extraordinary involvement at the highest levels but what I would say to you is that this was absolutely ordinary course of business that, because these briefing notes had gone to the premier it demanded the involvement of both cabinet secretariat and the premier's office," said Kennedy.

Kennedy said cabinet secretariat based its decision to exclude the questions from the briefing notes on decisions made by the privacy commissioner in this province and in Nova Scotia.

Different interpretations of the Access of Information Act are to blame for the differences of opinion said Kennedy. The premier's office called the scrum late Monday afternoon with only a half hours notice.

An official with the premier's office said that Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy would talk to reporters after several requests were made for the premier who is out of the country. However, only CBC reporter David Cochrane had requested an interview on the matter. At the end of the scrum, Kennedy asked reporters if he could make a last point.

He said the Cameron Inquiry has started hearing testimony about the laboratory procedure and what may have lead to hundreds of people getting inaccurate hormone receptor tests which are used to determine treatments for breast cancer.

"Our government is committed to finding the truth, having the truth come out in this inquiry, whatever that truth may be. And the chips have to fall wherever they may," said Kennedy.